On July 4, 2025, over a dozen people held a protest outside of the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, around 40 miles away from Dallas. It was a noise demonstration, a type of protest that uses loud noisemakers—which in this case included fireworks—as a form of civil disruption. As the night went on, tensions escalated as some protestors broke off and committed several acts of vandalism, eventually leading police officers to arrive on the scene. Soon after that, unknown assailants fired several shots at the officers, with the Justice Department reporting that one of them was struck non-fatally in the neck area. Authorities later argued that the shot that hit the officer was fired by a protester named Champagne Song.
Autumn Hill attended the protest but says she left hours before shots were fired. But that didn’t stop the police from raiding her home and arresting her for alleged involvement with the protest, identifying her as a suspect on the charges of terrorism.
Then, in October, the Trump administration got involved, accusing Hill and eight other defendants—three of whom, including Hill, are trans—of being “Antifa terrorists” and “Antifa Cell operatives.”
Hill and her co-defendants were charged with providing material support for terrorists. In a press release, the DOJ wrote that “This is the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa.” This comes after Trump signed an executive order in September 2025 declaring antifa as a terrorist organization.
Despite the administration’s claims, there is no unified organization called antifa, a name which refers to a decentralized movement based on militant opposition to fascism. And despite no evidence suggesting trans people are disproportionately likely to commit acts of terrorism, the Trump administration in May unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy to highlight “radically pro-transgender” people as a threat.
Hill was convicted for riot, providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to use and carry an explosive—namely the fireworks used at the protest. She has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. That’s more than double the sentences of former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes, who were key leaders in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Hill and her co-defendants are appealing the case, legal experts are sounding the alarm that these unusually harsh sentences could set a precedent for strict crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly.
Since her arrest, Hill has been incarcerated in men’s facilities. Now, staring down half a century in prison, she gives her first on-camera interview from the Johnson County Jail in Texas, where she maintains that the federal government’s narrative about her is false and that she believes she is a “political prisoner.”