Benjamin Song shot a police officer outside a Texas ICE facility and got one hundred years in prison.
Democrat Congressman Mark Pocan just went on live television and defended him.
What Pocan called Antifa on live television exposes exactly why he said that.
Pocan Compares a Cop Shooting Case to Castro's Cuba
On Thursday's broadcast of MS NOW Reports, host Antonia Hylton pressed Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan about the Prairieland ICE Detention Center case.
Hylton dismissed the federal prosecution as absurd and claimed the government had gone after mere demonstrators from an anti-ICE protest in Texas.
Pocan didn't push back.
He agreed completely.
"This is what we're complaining about the government of Cuba doing," Pocan said on air.
He compared American prosecutors to the regime that jails its own citizens for speaking out of line.
There's just one problem with that comparison.
Benjamin Song wasn't holding a protest sign.
He was firing a semiautomatic rifle at Alvarado Police Lieutenant Thomas Gross.
Song and his fellow Antifa cell members used fireworks, vandalism, and gunfire to ambush officers outside Prairieland on July 4, 2025.
A federal jury convicted nine defendants after a twelve day trial and testimony from more than 45 witnesses.
Song alone drew a 100 year sentence.
His co-defendants received sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Every sentence in the case adds up to 450 years behind bars.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the message behind those numbers was simple.
"No one gets to harm law enforcement," Patel said, "not on our watch."
No Antifa-linked defendant had ever been sentenced this way before Trump labeled the group a domestic terrorist organization.
That designation came after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last September.
Trump's directive, known as NSPM-7, ordered a broader federal crackdown on the movement blamed for fueling that violence.
Prosecutors used that authority to bring material support for terrorism charges against the Prairieland cell, the first time that charge had ever targeted anyone tied to Antifa.
Mark Pocan wants his audience to believe that authority is being abused against innocent protesters.
A State Department report this month found something Pocan doesn't want you thinking about.
Investigators say Cuba has long tried to embed itself inside America's protest movements, Antifa included.
The National Network on Cuba published the locations of U.S. military bases and ICE facilities and called for open agitation against them.
So when Pocan compares the Prairieland prosecution to Cuba, he's closer to the truth than he realizes, just pointing it in the wrong direction.
Pocan Toured Castro's Cuba and Came Back Defending It
Pocan didn't stop at comparing Prairieland to Cuba.
In that same interview, he waved away the Antifa threat entirely.
"The only Antifa I know is a drag queen with that name," Pocan said.
He called the entire domestic terrorism designation absurd.
Pocan doesn't just use Cuba as a talking point either.
He recently toured the island himself and clashed with Ambassador Mike Waltz after suggesting Marco Rubio's views on Cuba count for less since Rubio hasn't visited.
When Waltz pointed out that Marco Rubio's family fled Castro's Cuba, Pocan brushed that history off as ancient and irrelevant.
Here's the pattern. Castro's Cuba gets the benefit of the doubt from Pocan.
Antifa gets total deniability from Pocan.
American police officers get shot, and Pocan reaches for sympathy toward the shooters' prosecutors, not the wounded cop.
A Jury Verdict Is Not a Communist Show Trial
Cuba jails writers for the wrong sentence and dissidents for standing in the wrong square, with no jury and no appeal.
Prairieland's jury weighed more than 210 pieces of evidence before it reached a verdict.
Song never denied firing toward an officer, he only disputed what he claims was in his head at the time.
That is a shooting trial with a jury verdict, not a political prisoner story.
Pocan wants his audience to see a man who shot a cop as a modern Havana dissident.
What he's actually defending is a group that opened fire on law enforcement and called it self defense.
Democrats spent years demanding accountability after January 6th.
Now one of their own sitting congressmen is running cover for people who shot a police officer, on the very network built to carry that message to Democrat voters nationwide.
Sources:
- Ian Hanchett, "MS NOW's Hylton, Dem Rep. Pocan: Prosecuting for Shooting Officer Is Going After 'Protesters', Like Cuba," Breitbart, July 24, 2026.
- Ian Hanchett, "Dem Rep. Pocan: 'Antifa Is Nothing', 'Only Antifa I Know Is a Drag Queen'," Breitbart, July 24, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, "Leader of Antifa Cell Members in North Texas Sentenced to 100 Years in Prison for Terrorist Attack on ICE Facility," June 23, 2026.
- Fox News, "DOJ Brings First Antifa-Related Terrorism Charges in Texas ICE Attack."
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, "Antifa Cell Members Convicted in Prairieland ICE Detention Center Shooting," March 2026.
