Charges dropped against activists in Chicago immigration crackdown amid grand jury misconduct claims

CHICAGO– Chicago’s top federal prosecutor on Thursday dropped a closely watched case against four activists who protested outside a federal building during last year’s immigration crackdown in the city, after a judge reviewed allegations of grand jury misconduct by the prosecutor’s office.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros announced the decision to dismiss the remaining charges in court following a closed-door meeting on redacted grand jury transcripts. He told U.S. District Judge April Perry that he was unaware until recently of the alleged misconduct, including that the prosecutor met with a grand juror outside of proceedings and other jurors who disagreed with the case’s dismissal were blocked from participating. Boutros did not dispute the allegations, saying the conduct was upsetting and that was why the case was dismissed.

“No one acted with the intention of deceiving your honor, and I believe they followed your order to do the law,” Boutros said.

Boutros, who was appointed by the Trump administration last year, declined further comment Thursday through a spokesperson.

The case, scheduled for trial next week, is one of the highest-profile cases in the crackdown that spread last year in the country’s third-largest city and suburbs. It’s also the latest example of how the Justice Department has struggled to prosecute people accused of assaulting or obstructing federal agents as they protested President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Defense lawyers for the activists, including Kat Abughazaleh, a former Democratic congressional candidate, said they would request copies of the unredacted transcripts to learn more.

“The revelations of grand jury misconduct that led to the dismissal of the charges are unfortunately not surprising,” said Abghazaleh’s defense attorney, Josh Herman. “This misguided case should never have been brought against Kat Abughazaleh or any of her co-defendants for exercising their First Amendment rights.”

In October, Abughazaleh was among six people initially charged with conspiracy to obstruct an officer, a felony. Prosecutors say they surrounded an immigration agent’s van with other protesters at a federal facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview that was at the heart of the Trump administration’s aggressive operation.

Charges against two of the people were later dropped.

Last month, prosecutors dropped the criminal conspiracy charge altogether because of questions about the grand jury transcripts. The prosecutor’s new charging documents from last month did not detail other allegations against the activists.

Over the objections of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and other media outlets, Perry closed part of the hearing to the public because of the discussion of grand jury proceedings, which are kept secret.

The other defendants were André Martin, who was part of Abghazaleh’s campaign team; Brian Straw, Oak Park Village Trustee; and Democratic committee member Michael Rabbitt. Each faced a single misdemeanor charge of forcibly obstructing a federal agent.

The charges were dismissed with prejudice Thursday, preventing them from being filed again. Perry also floated the idea of ​​a separate hearing on possible sanctions against the U.S. Attorney’s Office for their actions.

This is not the first time under the Trump administration that prosecutors have faced scrutiny over their conduct before grand juries.

In November, for example, a federal judge in Virginia accused the Justice Department of engaging in “a disturbing series of profound investigative missteps” in the process of securing an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey.

Those problems, a district judge wrote, include “fundamental misstatements of the law” by a prosecutor on the grand jury that indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications during the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of grand jury proceedings.

The case was later dismissed after a judge determined that the prosecutor who filed the false statements complaint was illegally appointed. Comey was most recently indicted in April over a social media photo of shells placed on a beach that officials said posed a threat against Trump.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.