Supporters of the Prairieland defendants display pamphlets and artwork after their sentencing outside a Fort Worth, Texas, courthouse on June 23, 2026.
Photo: Matt Sledge/The Intercept
The Trump administration
attacking the right to publish or report information is a given at this point. The president has threatened journalists for everything from
questioning
the wisdom of his failed war with Iran to
touching
the peeled lining of his renovated
reflecting pool
.
Tantrums like those may now feel routine, but this week marked a new front in Trump’s war on information: Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of zines he didn’t even write. He’s one of eight defendants sentenced on Tuesday to a combined 450 years — the
first prison sentences
against so-called “antifa” handed down under the framework of
NSPM-7
, President Donald Trump’s sweeping “counterterrorism” memorandum to clamp down on dissent from the left.
Prairieland Defendant Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Moving a Box of Antifascist Zines
The prosecution’s theory was that Sanchez moved the zines, which discussed anarchism and other anti-government ideas, to conceal
evidence
in the case against his wife, Maricela Rueda. Rueda attended a July 4, 2025, protest at the Prairieland immigration jail in Texas where a police officer was shot. (She was not accused of shooting him or having anything to do with the shooting but was herself sentenced to 70 years.)
But that nuance is cold comfort: It assumes that simply possessing years-old political
pamphlets
that said
nothing about the protest or shooting
could somehow constitute evidence of a crime. Sharing the political ideology of the shooter, the government contended, meant Rueda and her co-defendants were culpable for the shooter’s actions — and by allegedly attempting to prevent officers from finding out about Rueda’s ideology, Sanchez shared in the blame as w
