A Trump-appointed federal judge rejected attorneys’ motions to suppress mounds of evidence on Tuesday in an upcoming Texas terrorism trial centered around Antifa, granting prosecutors a victory.
Defendants Cameron Arnold, Elizabeth Soto, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada wanted to exclude a co-defendant’s statements and “all” evidence that law enforcement obtained from certain home searches while investigating a July 2025 shooting at an immigration facility in Alvarado, Texas, court documents show. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman rejected all three motions, paving the way for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to show jurors extensive evidence surrounding a self-described Antifa terror cell involved in the attack.
Attorneys for Arnold, Soto, and Sanchez Estrada did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. They belong to a group of nine defendants facing a range of riot, terrorism, attempted murder, firearm, explosive, and evidence tampering charges in a shared trial that is set for Tuesday, court records show. Arnold and Soto are accused of helping to orchestrate the riot, while Sanchez Estrada is charged with hiding evidence in the probe, according to an indictment.
The DOJ says the group organized travel to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building with alleged ringleader Benjamin Song, began vandalizing it and throwing fireworks to draw police out, tried to flee after Song fired shots at a local officer, and helped him hide as a fugitive for days.
Soto’s wide-ranging court motion claimed that officials had no probable cause to search her residence despite having a judge’s approval.
Her lawyer asked Judge Pittman to suppress “all physical evidence, including, but not limited to, firearms, ammunition, printing devices, laptops, notes, cell phones, pamphlets, knives, identification, documentation, radios, tablets, [and] storage devices” taken in the search. It also asked to exclude law enforcement testimony and several other forms of evidence stemming from the search.
The upcoming trial will be America’s first-ever trial explicitly treating Antifa as a terrorist organization. In an October indictment, the DOJ described Antifa as “a militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to a revolutionary anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology, which explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law.” The document echoed wording from a September White House executive order on the issue.
Aside from the nine facing trial, seven federal defendants pleaded guilty while admitting to belonging to an Antifa terror cell and assisting its crimes related to the anti-ICE ambush, the DCNF previously reported. Others were charged by Texas officials in the case.
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