Howdy, y’all. Brian Gaar here with The Barbed Wire. Fall’s technically here, but the Texas heat doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo: still sweltering, still relentless, still reminding us why iced tea is practically a survival tool.
This week, we’ve got a civil rights pioneer finally getting his due, a young woman turning her ICE nightmare into advocacy, and another round of football chaos that has Cowboys fans praying to every god, demon, and kicker leg in the land.
Seventy-five years after Heman Sweatt challenged the University of Texas in the case that spelled the end of segregation, we’re giving him the spotlight he deserved. While researching Sweatt’s groundbreaking legal case against the U.S. Supreme Court, our writer, Deah Berry Mitchell, learned she had a personal connection to Sweatt’s legal team.
Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old from Garland, spent nearly five months in ICE custody after her honeymoon. She survived, thanks to solidarity from other detained women, and now she’s advocating for those still trapped in the system. A stark reminder that U.S. immigration enforcement can ruin even the happiest milestones.
The Barbed Wire also conducted an in-depth review of the court records and statements thus far in the July 4 attack on an ICE facility in Prairieland — the same one Ward Sakeik was housed in — and uncovered details that call into question the government’s case. Repeated changes to the official narrative, the rush to blame 17 people for what turned out to be an individual shooter, claims of defendants facing political persecution, and Trump’s stated desires to go after his political opponents have shrouded the investigation.
Meanwhile in football, the Cowboys fell to the Bears, lost CeeDee Lamb to injury, and left fans questioning their playoff hopes. Oh, and they get to face up with their former-star edge rusher Micah Parsons next week. Fun! Texas Tech stomped Utah and TCU rallied past SMU. Off the field, Simone Biles and Loreal Sarkisian owned the fashion game.
She Survived 141 Days in ICE Custody Thanks to a ‘Beautiful Sisterhood.’ Now She’s Fighting for Those Still Inside.
By Sam Judy
This Weekend in Texas Football: Cowboy Tears, a Camp Mystic Tribute & a Texas Tech Victory
By Cara Kelly and Leslie Rangel
‘None of It Makes Any Sense’: New Details in the July 4 ICE Attack Show Holes in Feds’ Case
Repeated changes to the official narrative, the rush to blame an entire group, claims of defendants facing political persecution, and Trump’s stated desires to go after his political opponents have shrouded the investigation.
By Steven Monacelli
On July 12, Amber Lowrey arrived at her sister’s apartment in Fort Worth.
The FBI had raided it days earlier, Lowrey said, and she surveyed the wreckage: shattered windows, broken doors, damaged floorboards from a flash bang. Agents seized four “pages of map documents,” according to a property receipt reviewed by The Barbed Wire.
Lowrey’s sister, Savannah Batten, had been arrested a week before for allegedly participating in what federal prosecutors have described as a “coordinated and targeted attack” against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center and an act of terrorism.
But the debris of her sister’s belongings — dead hermit crabs in their habitat, clothes laid out for work but never worn, a cherry cobbler left in the microwave to mold over — told Lowrey a different story.
“This is not a person who walked out of her apartment to do what they claim that she went to do,” Lowrey told The Barbed Wire in a phone interview. “Common sense tells us that if she had left her apartment to go and do that, she might not come home alive.”
“None of it makes any sense,” she added.
Batten was part of a protest on July 4 outside Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, that some participants and their supporters said was intended to be a noise demonstration and instead turned violent when a police officer was shot.
Batten is one of 11 individuals charged with multiple counts of attempted murder of a federal officer and of discharging a firearm during a violent crime. Six more individuals are charged with concealing evidence, helping other defendants evade arrest, or hindering the prosecution of terrorism.
The defendants, some of whom have ties to anarchist and anti-fascist circles, were arraigned earlier this week. All remain in custody, with multi-million dollar bonds.
The event — a protest-gone-wrong to defendants, a planned ambush to federal prosecutors — is part of an environment of heightened political violence, and escalating tensions around the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.
Federal prosecutors were still crafting their case against the July 4 defendants when another shooting at a Texas ICE facility happened on Wednesday morning. The Department of Homeland Security said a sniper opened fire on an ICE field office in Dallas. The shooter, who authorities identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, died from a self-inflicted gunshot. Three detainees were shot, according to a statement from DHS. Initially, authorities said that two detainees died and that one remained in critical condition. Later, that changed to one dead and two in critical condition. No law enforcement personnel were injured.
As the number of dead changed, FBI Director Kash Patel suggested the attack was ideologically motivated in a statement on X, accompanied with a photo of bullets — one of which has the words “ANTI-ICE” written on it.
“These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off. We are only miles from Prarieland (sic), Texas where just two months ago an individual ambushed a separate ICE facility targeting their officers,” Patel wrote. “It has to end and the FBI and our partners will lead these investigative efforts to see to it that those who target our law enforcement are pursued and brought to the fullest extent of justice.”
Vice President JD Vance also posted on X that the “obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “The epidemic of leftist political violence must end. Democrats have fostered an environment of evil, emboldening radicals to kill, steal, and destroy.”
Since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this month, President Donald Trump has stepped up attacks on perceived political foes.
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