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On July 4, 2025, around a dozen people gathered outside the ICE Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, for a noise demonstration in solidarity with the immigrants and ICE detainees inside. The event was advertised in large group chats, and people showed up ready to make noise and stand up against Trump’s attacks against our communities. At some point, an altercation allegedly occurred where an officer sustained a minor injury. Ten people were arrested, and state and federal police then charged them with extreme allegations of terrorism and attempted murder. Since then, another seven people have been arrested in connection with this case. The police have terrorized friends and family members of those arrested at the protest and after, serving no-knock warrants, conducting house raids, and engaging in widespread surveillance.

Des was not at the Prairieland demonstration. Instead, on July 6, after receiving a phone call from his wife in jail (one of the initial ten), Des was followed by Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) agents in Denton, Texas. They pretextually pulled him over due to a minor traffic violation and quickly arrested him at gunpoint. He was later charged with alleged “evidence tampering and obstruction of justice” based on a box of political pamphlets that he purportedly moved in his truck from his home (not his wife’s) to another house. This type of literature can be found in any activist house or independent bookstore. Des was briefly held at the Johnson County Jail, and then transferred to a federal prison, FMC Fort Worth, where he has been held ever since.

He is also currently on an ICE hold, and has been publicly targeted and doxxed on social media by both prominent fascists and ICE. Moreover, right after his arrest, his family experienced a brutal and intimidating nine-hour FBI raid of their home. Police confiscated everything from electronics to stickers and more zines.

On October 15, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office indicted Des for allegedly transporting “a box that contained numerous Antifa materials.” Then, on November 13, in a superseding indictment, Des was named as a codefendant with eight others for purportedly being part of a (fictitious) “North Texas Antifa Cell.” He again was accused of supposedly transporting “Antifa materials,” but now in a purported “conspiracy to conceal documents” to “impair their use [in] criminal proceedings.”

To underscore: Des was not at the Prairieland rally. He was arrested two days later after getting a call for familial support from his incarcerated wife, a Prairieland defendant. As pictured in the case’s criminal complaints, the materials at issue are widely available zines. Des is not just at risk of a lengthy federal prison sentence, which is bad enough. Even if released, he is in danger of being kidnapped by ICE and/or assaulted by fascists.

The framing of the case by the federal government should worry all of us. His prosecution is tied to and threatening his immigration status, and part of broader attacks on our immigrant, migrant, and refuge friends and family. It is also thinly veiled attempt to crack down on resistance, whether in deed or word. The criminalization of dissent—alongside solidarity and even ideas—means that everyone risks arrest and worse as the state moves to assert authoritarian power. Resistance, including zines, is not a crime.