反ICE抗议者被判数十年监禁，司法部称其为Antifa成员

In two federal courts yesterday, a group of protesters received unusually long sentences after the Justice Department accused them of being members of the far left movement Antifa. The sentences range from 30 to 100 years in prison, longer than the harshest sentence handed down to any of the convicted rioters in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol in 2021. All of those people have since received pardons or commutations from President Trump.

Our justice correspondent A li Roggen has more These 9 protesters were arrested after they demonstrated outside a migrant detention facility in Texas last year. During the protest, a police officer was shot in the neck. He survived. Their case is the first to incorporate new guidance from a presidential declaration last year that labels Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. That's despite the fact that Antifa is a decentralized movement, not a single organization, and that there is no federal charge of domestic terrorism under existing US law.

To discuss the implications of this sentencing, I'm joined by Georgetown Law professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler. Paul, good to see you. Welcome back to the Newshour. It's great to be here. I'd like to ask first about these decades-long sentences that were passed down. The longest was 100 years in prison. Most of the others received sentences of 50 to 70 years. You're familiar with the allegations against these defendants.

Were these are these sentences typical? No, they're not. The sentences are extremely harsh. There are sentences that are more typical for people who have committed murder or stolen millions of dollars. Compare these defendants to two other sets of defendants. One, they're co-defendants who were accused of the same conduct but pled guilty, fear going to be sentenced next month, and they're looking at around 15 years. We can also think of the 1500 people who were prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the most any of those defendants received was 22 years compared with the 30 to 70 years that these defendants received.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche released a statement in which he said in part, the sentences handed down today make clear that the antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice, calling them antifa terrorists. What do we know about Antifa and whether or not this terrorism label is really accurate. Antifa is not a formal organization. It doesn't have a leadership structure or a list of members.

It's more of a network of people on the far left who are opposed to fascism. President Trump has labeled it a domestic terrorist organization. Now there is such a thing as a foreign terrorist organization, but the law doesn't provide any classification for do me s tic terrorist organizations. More significantly, 5 of the alleged AntiFA members pled guilty, and they supported the prosecution, but on the stand, they den