All charges against Chicago protesters dropped in latest ICE case to unravel | US immigration
Federal prosecutors decided to drop all charges against four people indicted in October after protesting outside an immigrant detention center in suburban Chicago in the last such case to be resolved on behalf of the Trump administration.
U.S. attorney Andrew Boutros made the announcement Thursday after a meeting about redactions prosecutors made to a series of grand jury transcripts. Boutros told U.S. District Judge April Perry that he learned what happened three weeks ago.
Prosecutors abandoned their efforts, saying the protesters’ behavior was “unacceptable in a civilized society.”
Four protesters — Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin and Brian Straw — were charged in October with conspiring to obstruct an officer at the immigration detention center in Broadview, Illinois; This was a serious crime. They were among a half-dozen criminal demonstrators who became known as the Broadview Six.
Prosecutors alleged the group surrounded an immigration officer’s van with other protesters during Operation Midway Blitz, a front in a crackdown on immigrants that Donald Trump’s administration implemented in a number of US cities after the start of his second presidency.
Demonstrators were accused of hitting and pushing the car, scratching the word “pig” on the car and breaking the rear windshield wiper during a protest in September. During the demonstrations, they were responded to with pepper spray, pepper spray and plastic pellets.
The Broadway Six cases began to unravel in April after questions arose about grand jury transcripts and prosecutors refused to pursue further charges against the demonstrators. Prosecutors had dropped charges against two of the defendants before Thursday.
But the remaining four defendants faced misdemeanor charges of obstructing a federal officer, even though prosecutors dismissed conspiracy charges against them.
The case was supposed to be heard after the Memorial Day holiday but has now been dismissed with prejudice; This means the charges cannot be re-filed.
The collapse of the case, which was at the center of legal battles over the right to protest and allegations that demonstrators unlawfully violated the operation of law enforcement, represents a failure for the government.
Lawyers for the protesters said they would seek copies of the grand jury’s unredacted transcripts.
“The revelation of grand jury misconduct that led to the dismissal of the charges is unfortunately not surprising,” said Josh Herman, Abuhazaleh’s defense attorney. “This misguided lawsuit should never have been filed against Kat Abuhazaleh or his co-defendants for exercising their protected first amendment rights to free speech under the U.S. constitution.”
Martin’s lawyers said in a statement that their client and the other defendants “live under threat of imprisonment simply for exercising their First Amendment rights as decent, honorable citizens and trying to protect their fellow human beings.”
After the closed hearing, Judge Perry said he was considering a hearing on possible sanctions against the U.S. attorney’s office for their actions. Boutros did not dispute the allegations, saying the behavior was regrettable and was the reason the case was dismissed.
“No one acted with the intent to mislead your dignity, and I think they followed your lawmaking order,” Boutros said.
Thursday’s developments come after Illinois state police said they were investigating the death of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 20, the Chicago U.S. attorney’s office dropped charges against Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by a border patrol officer who allegedly tried to hit agents with her car.
Martinez, a U.S. citizen and Montessori teacher in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, was indicted on Oct. 5 on charges of obstructing a federal officer with a deadly weapon.
Also in January, a Chicago jury acquitted Juan Espinoza Martinez, whom the Trump administration accused of plotting to assassinate a high-profile border patrol officer.
