On March 13, 2026, after weeks of trial, a federal jury convicted nine defendants on most counts in the Prairieland case. They face decades in prison — for a September 2024 demonstration at a construction site.
The site was the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, planned as one of the largest immigration jails in the country. The demonstration against its construction became the basis for the first major federal trial of anti-ICE protest in the second Trump term, and the verdicts now stand as that experiment's result: nine people convicted in federal court, with a separate set of state charges still waiting for them in Johnson County.
The sentences have not yet been imposed, but the exposure is measured in decades, and the government's charging choices were built to produce exactly that. What might once have been prosecuted as trespass or property damage arrived at trial as a federal conspiracy — the same conversion that turned the Stop Cop City cases into a RICO indictment, and the June 2025 Spokane DHS protest into a conspiracy case against Army veteran Bajun Mavalwalla. Prosecutors position each of these cases to teach the same lesson: organized resistance to immigration-enforcement infrastructure will be priced as a federal crime, not a protest.
April 4: International Day of Solidarity
The defendants' support coalition answered the verdicts within days. In a March 17 statement published through IllWill Editions, it called for an International Day of Solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants on Friday, April 4, 2026:
"Show solidarity with these defendants by hosting letter writing nights, info sessions, noise demos, and fundraisers on April 4. We have a long journey ahead of us to continue fighting these charges, along with the state level charges. What happens here sets the tone for what's to come. We are here and we won't give up."
The coalition maintains current mailing addresses for letters of support, court schedules, and legal-defense fundraising channels. This archive will be updated as sentencing dates are set and the Johnson County state-court phase opens — and the nine will be listed on the NPPC roster for as long as their imprisonment lasts.
