Dario Sanchez woke up to the sound of a loudspeaker blaring outside his home on July 15, 2025: “Come out with your hands up.”
Before he could finish getting dressed, Sanchez said his door burst off its hinges. The FBI rushed in, handcuffed both Sanchez and his girlfriend and began asking what he knew about a recent shooting that occurred outside an immigration facility in Alvarado.
“They threatened me with 50 years of jail time and told me to tell them about some other people, and I didn't know what the hell they were talking about,” Sanchez told KERA News during an interview at his home. “I had nothing to do with any of this stuff. But they're coming after me like I'm somehow involved.”
Sanchez isn’t accused of pulling the trigger or even being at the scene of the shooting. But just a few days earlier, he said he got a visit from a fellow member of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association named John Thomas. Thomas was asking to be removed from group chats in the messaging app Discord. Sanchez obliged.
That simple act reeled Sanchez into a case that has become the biggest test of President Donald Trump’s domestic terrorism designation for “antifa” — short for anti-fascist, but used by the administration as an umbrella term for many left-wing beliefs and groups.
“Antifa” isn’t a centralized group with formal leadership, but it’s been described in this case as a collection of organizations that believe in anarchy and oppose the U.S. government — and its "presence" may have increased recently, said Errin Martin, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Texas.
While Martin said she can't comment on what ideologies "antifa" may hold, it's normal to see different groups rise within different administrations.
"Political climates change and activism changes," Martin said. "Depending on the political climate at the time, you see more activities from groups within different ideologies."
Some experts dispute whether the president has the power to issue a domestic terrorist designation in the same way he can declare a foreign terrorist designation. But it can help in cases involving charges allegedly motivated by domestic terrorism, Martin said.
"It certainly aids in things like sentencing enhancements, and there is a federal definition of domestic terrorism," Martin said.
Sanchez was charged with tampering or fabricating physical evidence, a third-degree felony, in the wake of the July 4 shooting outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center.
Prosecutors have called what happened that night a targeted and coordinated attack against law enforcement, and the indictments appear to be the first of their kind.
“It’s just weird to have this whole antifa thing that was a joke like eight years ago,” Sanchez said. “People were cracking jokes about how people think that there's this group funded by George Soros, and now the FBI director’s running around being like, ‘we got them, we found antifa and it’s a bunch of protesters.’”
'Incomprehensible’
According to court documents unsealed in July, 11 people dressed in all black were shooting fireworks towards Prairieland that night. An Alvarado police officer arrived, and several people began to flee the scene on foot and ignored verbal commands, according to a more recent complaint.
That’s when prosecutors say a person in the woods opened fire, hitting the Alvarado officer once in his neck, with the bullet exited through his back, he told jurors during the other Prairieland defendants' federal trial. That officer has since been treated and released from the hospital.
“This escalation in violence is incomprehensible, and those responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said at the time. “This is precisely what we have been warning against, as disinformation and dangerous politically-motivated rhetoric spreads.”
Ten people were arrested that night, and another the following morning. After a 10-day manhunt, the FBI arrested Benjamin Song on July 15. Prosecutors have pointed to Song as the alleged shooter that night.
Seven more people — including Sanchez — were later arrested for their alleged involvement in helping Song escape. A copy of Sanchez’s indictment obtained by KERA News accused him of tampering with evidence when he removed Thomas from those group chats and allege he may have removed Song as well.
Sanchez says the chats were primarily used by different chapters of the rifle association to coordinate and build relationships with one another.
“They're just scooping up as many people as they can and then, you know, holding them up like fish from the lake to say, ‘oh look, I found a terrorist,’” Sanchez said.
With 19 codefendants charged in connection with the case, prosecutors could use that to their advantage, according to Leigha Simonton, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
"It's like dominos — it comes as a unique circumstance that you have so many people who are charged, because that's a lot of leverage for the government to have once they can convince a few of them to play guilty," Simonton told KERA News in an interview. "Then the remaining defendants will automatically feel more pressure to plead guilty."
Nine other defendants pleaded not guilty to a mix of federal and state charges. Their federal trial began Feb. 17. Seven defendants pleaded guilty and will be sentenced later this month and next month.
Arrested three times
Sanchez is the only one of the 19 suspects not in custody — but that hasn’t always been the case. He’s been detained three separate times between July and September, all of which his attorneys called wrongful arrests.
Sanchez’s bond for the July 15 arrest was set at $5 million. Court records show the bond was reduced to $100,000 and he bailed out Aug. 20.
Then when Sanchez went to a court hearing for his bond conditions Aug. 28, he was rearrested — a Johnson County grand jury indicted him with an additional charge of hindering prosecution of terrorism, a first-degree felony.
Sanchez was released again on a $150,000 bond the next day, with several bond conditions. Part of those included having his electronic devices monitored for "gun violence, anti-government and any violence in general," according to court documents shared with KERA News.
On Sept. 22, Sanchez was notified he had a hearing for a bond increase. When he was on his way to the courthouse, he said he was stopped by Irving police who then held him at gunpoint after he was pulled over.
Sanchez was arrested for a third time for the same two charges, and now had a $1 million bond.
He was accused of violating his bond conditions over “concerning internet history.” Court documents claim the concerning searches included how to melt and make molds out of plastic, researching radio-controlled transmitters, the use of Nintendo Game Boy batteries as power sources for trigger devices, temperature and pressure sensors, and various small electronic circuit boards.
But according to his attorney, Frank Sellers, the internet searches that landed Sanchez back in jail were conducted by his bond supervisor — not Sanchez.
For example, although court documents claim Sanchez searched, “is the 900 mAh battery from a (Game Boy) capable of being used in a trigger device," Sellers said that was actually a search from the supervisor, who was cross-referencing real searches from Sanchez to see if they could be used to make explosives.
Coyle then took a screenshot of his own search history and sent it to the district attorney, leading to a violation of Sanchez’s probation and his rearrest, Sellers said.
The attorney maintains Sanchez’s searches only pertained to gaming and scale car models, and that the screenshot from Coyle’s computer clearly did not include the monitoring software that was on Sanchez’s phone.
"He's stuck at home trying to find a hobby, something to tinker with," his attorney Frank Sellers told KERA News. "And instead of allowing a person to live their lives, Johnson County has thrown him in jail for what George Orwell would call 'thought crime.'"
Sanchez said he knew the search wasn’t his and called it “ridiculousness."
"Why would I look that up in the first place?” he said. “Why now of all times? You know, when they tell you that [search] is yours, at first, you're like, ‘what possible way could this have happened?’ And then I thought, ‘wait a minute, there's no way this is mine.’”
KERA News reached out to the bond supervisor, Richard Coyle, who no longer supervises Sanchez and said was not authorized to speak about the case. Johnson County District Attorney Timothy Good did not respond to requests for comment.
Sanchez was re-indicted in December with more specific charges: fabricating or tampering evidence with the intent to impair, along with hindering prosecution of terrorism, court records show.
Sanchez is facing state charges instead of federal charges — something Simonton said is not surprising with the limited amount of evidence of his alleged involvement.
"He is one of the lesser players in this alleged conspiracy or sequence of events," Simonton said. "It could suggest that both the Johnson County's DA's office and the U.S. Attorney's Office understand there is a difference in terms of the amount of evidence in the seriousness of the conduct."
What’s next?
Sanchez’s trial, initially set for January, has been moved to April 20. He maintains his innocence and hopes the charges can be dropped. His lawyers argue the tampering with evidence charge only applies to physical evidence, not digital.
“I think that people go to law school to learn how to read the law, presuming they know how to read the English language," Sellers, his lawyer, said after a court hearing Jan. 22. "And quite simply, ‘digital’ and ‘physical’ don't mean the same thing.”
Sanchez also said he didn’t think any Socialist Rifle Association members in attendance the night of the shooting expected any gun violence. Multiple defendants from that night have also told KERA News it was meant to be a noise demonstration and peaceful protest in support of people detained by ICE.
An email shared with KERA News shows SRA’s DFW chapter has been suspended by its national director amid the ongoing cases.
Sanchez said the group was more than just a rifle club. It also taught other skills like emergency medical training, which he said was crucial in his role as a now-former teacher.
“We would teach people what to do if someone's been shot, how to treat that injury up until EMS arrives and they can get to a hospital,” Sanchez said. “As a teacher, that’s a real big piece of mind thing for me because, unfortunately, my line of work involves a lot of worrying about if a mass shooting might happen.”
But now, he’s worried he may not ever return to teaching.
"I can't imagine a principal reading all this stuff about me and thinking it's a good idea to hire me regardless of my innocence,” Sanchez said. “It’s just hard to account for all the ways that this has just torn my life apart.”
Additional reporting by Toluwani Osibamowo.
Penelope Rivera is KERA's Tarrant County Accountability Reporter. Got a tip? Email Penelope Rivera at privera@kera.org.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
