Guilty pleas are piling up in the first-known federal terrorism case in American history brought against antifa militants, as prosecutors continue to close in on more convictions.
A group of gun-wielding antifa radicals is accused of carrying out a July 4 terrorist attack on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas, about half an hour south of Fort Worth.
More than a dozen members of the heavily armed cohort — many of whom have already admitted guilt — allegedly lured law enforcement officers outside and opened fire on them from various vantage points. A local Alvarado police officer was shot in the neck by the black-clad assailants after he arrived on the scene to answer a call for help from the guards under attack at the Prairieland Detention Center.
Following the coordinated shooting, federal authorities filed a slew of terrorism-related charges against 16 codefendants believed to be cell operatives or associates of the Dallas-area antifa cell, including alleged accomplices who either helped hide suspects or tampered with evidence in the days after the attack.
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Since then, nearly half of the codefendants have taken plea deals, admitting in exchange that they belong to a highly sophisticated antifa cell based in the Dallas area.
Here’s where the case currently stands, as a slate of holdouts head to trial in January while the others who pleaded out await sentencing.
Who has pleaded guilty so far?
Two more admitted antifa associates pled guilty on Nov. 24, 2025, bringing the total number of convictions in the case to seven.
As part of the plea deals, Rebecca Morgan and Susan Elaine Kent acknowledged their affiliation with the Texas antifa cell and admitted to providing material support to terrorists by helping to hide the group’s then-fugitive ringleader, Benjamin Hanil Song, who had fled into the woods near the ICE facility and needed to be ferried out of the area.
Morgan and Kent both admitted to joining a support network that mobilized to ensure Song’s escape, which then triggered a multistate manhunt involving the FBI, after learning of the antifa cell’s large-scale assassination attempt at the Alvarado detention center.
Morgan confessed to picking up Song in a “handoff” at a Home Depot parking lot in Dallas and supplying him with clothes, food, and shelter. She admittedly harbored Song at her apartment, the cell’s designated hideout at the time, where she concealed him from law enforcement for approximately a week.
Kent admitted to working with others to make those lodging and transportation arrangements, including coordinating the pickup point at the Home Depot, to help Song abscond. The plan was to continually move Song around between safe houses.
An antifa blog post denouncing Kent’s arrest said she was “actively” involved in the DFW Support Committee, a group raising funds for the Alvarado suspects on GiveSendGo. To date, the fundraising campaign has collected nearly $60,000 from anonymous donors to cover their legal defense fees.
Unlike their other codefendants, who had pleaded guilty before them, Morgan and Kent only confessed to assisting the cell, not being members. Kent, however, admitted that she is “aware of Antifa beliefs” and that “many members of the [Socialist Rifle Association], including co-defendants, consider themselves ‘antifascist.’”
One week prior, the Department of Justice secured guilty pleas from five other coconspirators.
Seth Edison Sikes, Joy Abigail Gibson, Lynette Read Sharp, Nathan Josiah Baumann, and John Phillip Thomas all entered guilty pleas on Nov. 19, 2025, to the same charge of providing material support to terrorists.
Sikes, Gibson, and Baumann were apprehended close to the scene of the shooting, found fleeing on foot with several others, while Thomas and Sharp were charged as “accessories after the fact.”
Pursuant to the plea agreements, the five codefendants admitted to aiding “acts of terrorism” and belonging to the Dallas-area antifa cell that ambushed the Alvarado facility, marking the first time in U.S. history that antifa ideologues have openly admitted in criminal court to being part of an organized antifa branch.
During the plea process, the defendants accepted a set of stipulated, or undisputed, facts of the case. Throughout these admission statements, the codefendants divulged in great detail antifa’s organizational framework, tactical strategies, and operational objectives.
“Antifa is a militant enterprise that advocates insurrection and violence to affect the policy and conduct of the U.S. government by intimidation and coercion,” said Baumann’s stipulated facts, which he signed in agreement.
“In line with his Antifa ideology, on or about July 3 and July 4, Baumann, along with others, participated in the planning of the ‘direct action’ against Prairieland set for the night of July 4.”
In a similar summary of stipulated facts, Sikes acknowledged that antifa organizes in “cells or ‘affinity groups’ around their beliefs.”
They prepared for the surprise attack on the Alvarado compound by conducting reconnaissance; donning “black bloc,” antifa’s universal uniform, to shroud their identities; and coordinating over Signal, an encrypted messaging application, according to a summary of events that Gibson agreed is true.
Sharp and Thomas admittedly assisted Song, the cell’s at-large leader who was wanted by the FBI for over a week and had made the Texas Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list, in the aftermath of the attack. Thomas was the one who drove Song to the Home Depot parking lot while Sharp provided a change of clothes for him, face coverings, and a wig to wear.
Their confessions, which laid bare antifa’s modus operandi, undercut claims propagated by the political Left that antifa is a leaderless movement lacking organizational structure, on-the-ground operations, and an identifiable member base.
The guilty pleas, as well as their accompanying admissions, could accordingly bring about broader implications for antifa’s forces.
Extremism watchdogs envision that the case will help debunk the myth that antifa is simply an idea, signaling a turning point in the national discourse over antifa’s existence. Never before, in recent memory, have antifa operatives confessed to their membership in the court record, let alone unmasked other associates.
Capital Research Center president Scott Walter said their admissions “should destroy the lie that antifa doesn’t exist as organized groups.”
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“This is an unprecedented case,” Walter previously told the Washington Examiner. “They have gone on the record, saying, ‘Here’s how we operated. Here are the other people I was working with. Here’s the person I was helping to hide out.’”
Sikes, Gibson, Sharp, Baumann, and Thomas, like Morgan and Kent, each face up to 15 years in federal prison, instead of the decades they could have spent behind bars had they been convicted at trial. Their sentencing is scheduled for March 2026.
Who is still facing charges?
On Nov. 26, 2025, nine recently indicted codefendants tied to the Alvarado shooting pleaded not guilty at their federal arraignments in Fort Worth. Among them are Song, Zachary Jared Evetts, Savanna Sue Batten, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Andrea Soto, Ines Houston Soto, Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada, and two transgender co-defendants, Cameron James Arnold, also known as “Autumn Hill,” and Bradford Winston Morris, alias “Meagan Elizabeth.”
They stand accused of federal crimes ranging from rioting to attempted murder of federal officers. Their jury trial is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 20, 2026. If convicted on all counts, the nine suspects could spend life in prison.
Sanchez-Estrada, a Mexican national and the husband of Rueda, is being held separately at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth.
According to ICE, Sanchez-Estrada was given a green card under the Biden administration in 2024.
Sanchez-Estrada originally gained temporary protection from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era policy that protected illegal immigrants who entered the country as children.
Many of the codefendants face state charges as well in Texas, with offenses including organized crime, obstruction of justice, terrorism, and smuggling of persons. The seven who pleaded guilty in their federal case are still awaiting state-level criminal proceedings.
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Two other state defendants, though they were not federally charged, are being prosecuted by the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office in connection with the case.
Janette Goering, codename “Anarchy Marie,” faces charges of aiding in the commission of terrorism, a state felony. She allegedly provided Song with a Faraday bag, a device blocking electromagnetic signals, to prevent police from tracking his phone.
Dario Emmanuel Sanchez, a teacher in the Dallas Independent School District, was indicted in August 2025 by a Texas grand jury on tampering charges for allegedly deleting texts from Signal and Discord showing the cell’s attack plans.
Sanchez was bailed out of Johnson County Jail soon after; however, he was re-arrested days later on suspicion of hindering the prosecution of terrorism and then bailed out again on a reduced bond, lowered from $1 million to $150,000.
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The federal terrorism case came after President Donald Trump designated antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, directing all appropriate agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle” criminal networks operating under the banner of antifa, including taking prosecutorial action against antifa’s financial backers.