FORT WORTH, Texas (June 30, 2026) — Savanna Batten, one of the Prairieland protesters, received an astonishing sentence last week: 50 years in federal prison for attending a protest and running a book club. Now, she is appealing.
Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) are taking on the case and challenging Batten’s conviction and sentence in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Read the notice of appeal here.
Last Fourth of July, Batten attended a protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. She did not plan the protest, but her intent was simple: to express her political beliefs by participating in a noise demonstration in support of those being imprisoned inside the federal immigration detention center. Later that evening, a different protester and a police officer exchanged gunfire. The officer was shot in the neck. Batten had nothing to do with the exchange of gunfire. She did not bring a firearm to the protest. She did not possess a weapon.
Yet Batten was one of nine people arrested in the wake of the incident. Some of those arrested did not even know each other.
After months in pretrial detention, Batten was tried alongside eight others in a single trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Following a three-week trial, which attorneys and observers say was marred by errors and irregularities, Batten was convicted of rioting, providing material support to terrorists, using and carrying an explosive, and conspiracy to use and carry an explosive. During the trial, the prosecution focused heavily on the fact that Batten and some of the others on trial were members of a public book group called the “Emma Goldman Book Club.” The government deemed the political zines that the group read “insurrectionary materials.”
On June 23, Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who did not preside over Batten’s trial, sentenced her to 50 years in prison. According to court observers, Judge O’Connor noted at sentencing that the prosecution and severe sentences would “send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.” Including Batten, the eight people sentenced on June 23 received a total of 450 years in prison.
“This conviction is the continuation of a campaign of terror and violence that has been allowed to imprison people speaking out against the immigration policies of the administration,” Batten said. “Experts warn that my conviction will have a chilling effect on previously constitutionally protected activities. This was made clear as the intent when Judge O’Connor said he wanted to make an example of us with a clear disregard for the facts of the case.
“This is a government telling its citizens that to raise a voice of dissent carries a life sentence, maybe even death. To my friends, to Renee Good, to Alex Pretti, and to the people being held in detention centers across the country, I have the very same urgent message that compelled me to Prairieland that night with a heavy heart: we see you, we love you, you are not forgotten.”
Batten is a native Texan, a daughter, a sister, and someone her mother describes as “the best of us.” When she went to prison, she left behind six rescued hermit crabs and a cat named Garfielda. She believes deeply in caring for the people and animals around her.
“The First Amendment does not have an asterisk that says, ‘except when the government disagrees with you,’” said Anna Byers, Senior Counsel for Justice System Reform at SCSJ. “If Savanna Batten can be sentenced to 50 years for showing up to a protest, no one who has ever marched, organized, or raised their voice is safe. We are appealing because the alternative is unacceptable.”
“When our own federal government uses its enormous power to crack down on dissent and punish those who dare speak truth to power, it should be a warning to us all,” said Travis Fife, Staff Attorney with the Criminal Legal Program at TCRP. “As is often the case, however, the government overreaches. We are eager to secure justice for Savanna and bring her home where she belongs.”
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Southern Coalition for Social Justice came together in 2007 to give Black, Brown, and low-income people better resources in the fight for justice across the South. We are lawyers, social scientists, and communications professionals working to dismantle racism and oppression in the criminal legal system, in our environment, and at the ballot box. Learn more at southerncoalition.org and follow our work on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
The Texas Civil Rights Project is boldly serving the movement for equality and justice in and out of the courts. We use our tools of litigation and legal advocacy to protect and advance the civil rights of everyone in Texas, and we partner with communities across the state to serve the rising movement for social justice. We undertake our work with a vision of a Texas in which all communities can thrive with dignity, justice and without fear.