US drops case against protesters of Chicago immigration blitz

By David Thomas

May 21 (Reuters) – Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said his office is dropping all remaining criminal charges against four people who were indicted after protesting last year outside a holding facility in Broadview, Illinois.

A trial had been scheduled to start Tuesday, May 26, in the incident at the Broadview facility, which became a flashpoint of President Donald Trump’s immigration blitz. The prosecution’s decision to drop the charges made it the latest Justice Department case to fall apart.

Boutros told a federal judge on Wednesday that the charges against Kat Abughazaleh, a ​former journalist who recently lost a Democratic primary race for a U.S. House seat, Andre Martin, Michael Rabbitt ​and Brian Straw are being dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled, a spokesperson for his office said.

The four defendants had faced misdemeanor charges of impeding a federal officer after prosecutors last month dismissed a felony conspiracy charge against them. They were part of the “Broadview Six” along with two others — Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh — whose cases were completely dropped by prosecutors earlier this year.

“I am relieved to be exonerated today, but I want to state clearly that fighting these unjust federal charges over the past seven months was never just about me or my co-defendants in this case,” Straw, a shareholder at U.S. law firm Greenberg Traurig and a member of the Village Board for Chicago suburb Oak Park, said in a statement.

Terence Campbell and Valerie Davenport, attorneys for Martin, said in a statement that their client and his codefendants have been “living under the threat of going to prison simply for exercising their First Amendment rights as decent, honorable citizens and seeking to protect their fellow human beings.”

A spokesperson for the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment further. Boutros last month said his office was “constantly evaluating the facts and law in our Operation Midway ‌Blitz cases, ⁠as well as new information when it is brought to our attention.”

Prosecutors had accused Abughazaleh and the others of crowding around a government vehicle driven by a federal agent, ​hindering its progress into ​the Broadview ⁠facility during a September 26 protest. They allegedly banged and pushed on the vehicle, scratched the word “pig” into its body, and broke a rear windshield wiper.

The Trump administration’s crackdown, dubbed Operation Midway Blitz, led to thousands of arrests as federal immigration agents clashed with protesters from September until December. Agents shot two people, including one person fatally, and threatened to shoot others, body-cam footage ​shows.

Agents repeatedly deployed tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets at protesters outside the Broadview immigration holding center during near-daily demonstrations and across many Chicago neighborhoods. An independent commission created by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker last month recommended that local prosecutors investigate federal agents for misconduct.

This month, Illinois State Police said they were investigating the death of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in suburban Chicago.

In another case that fell apart, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office on November 20 dropped charges against Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent after she allegedly tried to ram agents with her car. On October 5, Martinez, a ‌U.S. citizen ⁠and Montessori school teacher in Oak Park, was indicted on charges of impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon.

In January, a Chicago jury acquitted Juan Espinoza Martinez, whom the Justice Department had charged with plotting a hit on a high-profile Border Patrol official.

(Reporting by David Thomas. Editing by Emily Schmall and David Gregorio)