Federal prosecutors have<\/span> filed a new indictment<\/a> in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn\u2019t even at the protest. Daniel \u201cDes\u201d Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained \u201cAntifa materials\u201d after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there. <\/p>\n But the boxed materials aren\u2019t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim \u201cAntifa\u201d uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint<\/a> that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas \u2014 one was titled \u201cInsurrectionary Anarchy\u201d \u2014 but they\u2019re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration\u2019s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists<\/a> after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating<\/a> \u201cAntifa\u201d as a \u201cmajor terrorist organization\u201d \u2014 a legal designation that doesn\u2019t exist for domestic groups \u2014 following the killing<\/a> of Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n Sanchez was first indicted<\/a> in October on charges of \u201ccorruptly concealing a document or record\u201d as a standalone case, but the new indictment merges his charges with those against the other defendants, likely in hopes of burying the First Amendment problems with the case against him under prosecutors\u2019 claims about the alleged shooting.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an escalation of a familiar tactic. In 2023, Georgia prosecutors listed \u201czine\u201d distribution as part of the conspiracy charges against 61 Stop Cop City protesters in a sprawling RICO indictment<\/a> that didn\u2019t bother to explain how each individual defendant was involved in any actual crime. I wrote back then about my concern that this wasn\u2019t just sloppy overreach, but also a blueprint for censorship<\/a>. Those fears have now been validated by Sanchez\u2019s prosecution solely for possessing similar literature.<\/p>\n There have been other warnings that cops and prosecutors think they\u2019ve found a constitutional loophole \u2014 if you can\u2019t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. Los Angeles journalist Maya Lau is suing the LA County Sheriff\u2019s Department for secretly investigating her for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property. According to her attorneys<\/a>, her only offense was reporting<\/a> on a list of deputies with histories of misconduct for the Los Angeles Times.<\/p>\n If you can\u2019t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It\u2019s also reminiscent of the Biden administration\u2019s case<\/a> against right-wing outlet Project Veritas for possessing and transporting Ashley Biden\u2019s diary, which the organization bought from a Florida woman<\/a> later convicted of stealing and selling it. The Constitution protects<\/a> the right to publish materials stolen by others \u2014 a right that would be meaningless if they couldn\u2019t possess the materials in the first place.<\/p>\n Despite the collapses<\/a> of the Cop City prosecution<\/a> and the Lau investigation \u2014 and its own dismissal of the Project Veritas case \u2014 the Trump administration has followed those dangerous examples, characterizing<\/a> lawful activism and ideologies as terrorist<\/a> conspiracies (a strategy Trump allies also floated<\/a> during this first term) to seize the power to prosecute pamphlet possession anytime they use the magic word \u201cAntifa.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a chilling combination for any journalist, activist, or individual who criticizes Trump. National security reporters<\/a> have long dealt with the specter of prosecution<\/a> under the archaic Espionage Act<\/a> for merely obtaining government secrets from sources, particularly after the Biden administration extracted a guilty plea<\/a> from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange<\/a>. But the rest of the press \u2014 and everyone else, for that matter \u2014 understood that merely possessing written materials, no matter what they said, is not a crime.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n At what point does a literary collection or newspaper subscription become prosecutorial evidence under the Trump administration\u2019s logic? Essentially, whenever it\u2019s convenient. The vagueness is a feature, not a bug. When people don\u2019t know which political materials might later be deemed evidence of criminality, the safest course is to avoid engaging with controversial ideas altogether. <\/p>\n The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn\u2019t hypothetical, and we\u2019re already sliding fast. Journalist Mario Guevara<\/a> can tell you that from El Salvador, where he was deported in a clear case of retaliation for livestreaming a No Kings protest. So can Tufts doctoral student R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk<\/a>, as she awaits deportation proceedings for co-writing an opinion piece<\/a> critical of Israel\u2019s wars that the administration considers evidence of support for terrorism.<\/p>\n At least two journalists lawfully in the U.S. \u2014 Ya\u2019akub Ira Vijandre<\/a> and Sami Hamdi<\/a> \u2014 were nabbed by ICE just last month. The case against Vijandre<\/a> is partially based on his criticism of prosecutorial overreach in the Holy Land Five<\/a> case and his liking social media posts that quote Quranic verses, raising the question of how far away we are from someone being indicted for transporting a Quran or a news article critical of the war on terror.<\/p>\n Sanchez\u2019s case is prosecutorial overreach stacked on more prosecutorial overreach. The National Lawyers Guild criticized <\/a>prosecutors\u2019 tenuous dot-connecting to justify holding 18 defendants responsible for one gunshot wound. Some defendants were also charged with supporting<\/a> terrorism due to their alleged association with \u201cAntifa.\u201d Anarchist zines were cited<\/a> as evidence against them, too.<\/p>\n Sanchez was charged following a search that ICE proclaimed on social media<\/a> turned up \u201cliteral insurrectionist propaganda\u201d he had allegedly transported from his home to an apartment, noting that \u201cinsurrectionary anarchism is regarded as the most serious form of domestic (non-jihadi) terrorist threat.\u201d The tweet also said that Sanchez is a green card holder granted legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.<\/p>\n The indictment claims Sanchez was transporting those materials to conceal them because they incriminated his wife. But how can possession of literature incriminate anyone, let alone someone who isn\u2019t even accused of anything but being present when someone else allegedly fired a gun? Zines aren\u2019t contraband; it\u2019s not illegal<\/a> to be an anarchist or read about anarchism. I don\u2019t know why Sanchez allegedly moved the box of documents, but if it was because he (apparently correctly) feared prosecutors would try to use them against his wife, that\u2019s a commentary on prosecutors\u2019 lawlessness, not Sanchez\u2019s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-19-at-1.07.12-PM.png?fit=692%2C926\")
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Guilt by Literature<\/strong><\/h2>\n