On July 4, 2025, a group of eight people wearing military-style gear and carrying AR-15-style rifles launched a coordinated ambush on the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. They used fireworks to lure law enforcement officers outside, then opened fire. Between 20 and 30 rounds hit the facility and surrounding area. One Alvarado police officer took a bullet to the neck.
On Tuesday, the man who organized it got 100 years in federal prison.
Benjamin Hanil Song, a former Marine Corps Reservist, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor after being convicted in March of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer as part of the first federal domestic terrorism prosecution of Antifa members. The group had communicated through encrypted messaging apps and used Faraday bags to prevent phone tracking — the kind of operational security you'd expect from a trained combatant, not what Song's defense attorney tried to sell.
That defense attorney, Phillip Hayes, told the court his client and co-defendants were "a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart." He added: "It was never intended that anybody get hurt."
They fired 20 to 30 rounds at law enforcement officers using semi-automatic rifles. One officer was shot in the neck. The "big heart" defense is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Judge O'Connor was not persuaded. He called the attack "an assault on democracy" and said "the need to deter this type of conduct is high" before handing down the maximum sentence. Seven additional defendants received sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years. Combined, the eight members of the cell were sentenced to 450 years in federal prison.
The prosecution was the first of its kind following the Trump administration's designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization in September 2025. Alvarado Police Chief Teddy May's officers were among those who responded to the ambush. The officer who was shot in the neck recovered fully, which is the only piece of luck in this entire story.
Now here's where it gets interesting. ABC, NBC, and CBS devoted exactly zero seconds of their evening newscasts to the sentencing. Not a mention. Not a graphic. Not a crawl at the bottom of the screen.
This wasn't a minor oversight. Eight domestic terrorists sentenced to a combined 450 years, the ringleader getting the maximum century, the first federal Antifa terrorism prosecution — and the three broadcast networks found other things to talk about. ABC ran a segment on a police chase involving an RV in Orlando and a story about an Amazon driver parking on a customer's lawn. CBS covered a 13-year-old who fell from a Disney ride and a dog at a Miami Marlins game. NBC went with the Disney story too, plus a Miami Heat trade.
The networks hadn't exactly been generous with the original story either. When the attack happened in July 2025, CBS gave it 25 seconds — anchor Maurice DuBois noting that "ten people charged with attempted murder after allegedly staging an ambush at an immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas." ABC and NBC gave it nothing at all.
So the math works out like this: a coordinated, military-style assault on a federal facility by an organized domestic terror cell, followed by a landmark prosecution and historic sentencing, earned a cumulative 25 seconds of broadcast network coverage across both events.
An Amazon driver on someone's lawn made the cut. A dog at a baseball game made the cut. Four hundred and fifty years of prison sentences for people who shot a cop in the neck did not.
Bias by omission doesn't require a memo. It just requires editors who all happen to find the same stories inconvenient at the same time.
