A group of North Texas protesters was sentenced to decades in prison this week for their involvement in a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility near Fort Worth last year, and already, First Amendment advocates and political organizers are warning that the case sets a dangerous new precedent for political expression.

Individuals who traveled to the Prairieland Detention Center last summer said the plan was originally to set off fireworks over the facility as a part of a noise demonstration.

In the end, though, one police officer who responded to the assembly was shot and wounded.