Article Summary
- Lawyers for the remaining four of the so-called “Broadview Six” are accusing federal prosecutors of strategically reneging on a plan to drop the main conspiracy charge against the indicted immigration protesters.
- In a pair of motions filed Monday, attorneys for the defendants said the feds employed a strategy to keep grand jury transcripts away from both the judge and the defense, but is now trying to “have its cake and eat it, too” by not immediately moving to drop the conspiracy charges.
- The case is scheduled for trial on the remaining misdemeanor charges later this month.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
CHICAGO — Attorneys for the remaining “Broadview Six” immigration protesters indicted in October say federal prosecutors are abusing their power in order to keep secret what they told the grand jury that resulted in charges, including a rare conspiracy count.
The accusations, contained in a pair of motions filed Monday, follow the government lawyers’ surprise move last week when they told the judge overseeing the case that they intended to drop the main conspiracy charge against the four remaining defendants.
While defense attorneys characterized it as a “win” for their clients, they also suggested the feds’ unexpected move was a strategic way to avoid having to hand over unredacted transcripts of the grand jury’s three meetings prior to delivering an indictment.
Read more: Feds say they’ll drop conspiracy charge against remaining ‘Broadview Six’ protesters
U.S. District Judge April Perry had called an April 29 hearing to examine the grand jury transcripts, but just as she was asking prosecutors if they objected to them being provided to the defendants, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan told the judge she’d “find that is moot” as prosecutors were moving to dismiss the conspiracy count. The conspiracy charge was the only felony in the indictment, and grand juries do not generally consider misdemeanor charges.
But defense attorneys now say prosecutors have gone back on their word and are trying to “have its cake and eat it, too” by holding off on officially moving to drop the conspiracy charge until after the trial on the remaining misdemeanor charges, scheduled for May 26.
“The Section 372 felony conspiracy charge continues to hang over the defendants like the proverbial Sword of Damocles,” the motion said, going on to speculate that prosecutors could later reverse course and “prosecute them for this conspiracy charge it now says it wants to leave pending (at least for the foreseeable future).”
One motion filed Monday asked Perry to dismiss the conspiracy count herself, while the other renewed defendants’ demand to see the grand jury transcripts. The judge on Tuesday scheduled an early morning hearing in the case Thursday.
Defense attorneys argued that leaving the conspiracy charge up in the air “dramatically impacts the trial,” including how trial strategy is shaped.
Moreover, the lawyers argued there could only be “three plausible explanations” for why the government would want to keep the grand jury transcripts secret from both the judge and the defendants: That prosecutors “mis-instructed” the grand jury on the law, “failed to instruct the grand jury on the law at all,” or said something to the grand jury that was “otherwise improper or prejudicial.”
The motion referenced the Department of Justice’s recent indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and the Southern Poverty Law Center, saying the DOJ’s choice to “abandon” the conspiracy charge “rather than submit to scrutiny its conduct before the grand jury comes at a time of mounting national distrust in the Department of Justice’s use of the grand jury process.”
“These actions only underscore the growing concern that the grand jury is being wielded not as an instrument of justice, but as a tool of unchecked prosecutorial power meant to persecute any perceived enemies of the current White House,” the motion said.
Conspiracy charge
The case stems from a Sept. 26, 2025, demonstration outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, which at the time was the epicenter of protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Social media video of the protest posted by influencer-turned-congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh captured the moment she and dozens of others surrounded an ICE vehicle that drove through the demonstrating crowd, banging on its windows.
Read more: ‘Broadview Six’ plead not guilty to charges of ‘impeding’ agents outside ICE facility | Democratic candidates, officeholders indicted for ‘impeding’ agent outside ICE facility
A month later, Abughazaleh and five others were charged with an overarching count of felony conspiracy, which alleged they conspired to “interrupt, hinder, and impede” a federal immigration agent from the “discharge of his official duties.” They were also each individually charged with misdemeanor simple assault of a federal officer, which does not require physical contact.
The vehicle’s windshield wipers were damaged and someone scratched “PIG” into its side, though the government has acknowledged it isn’t alleging any of the defendants perpetrated those specific acts of vandalism.
The feds dropped charges against two defendants in March. But the group still includes Abughazaleh, her deputy campaign manager, Andre Martin, Chicago 45th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Rabbitt, and Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw.
Read more: Charges dismissed for 2 of ‘Broadview 6’ ICE facility protesters
Though five of the six defendants were politically active, they maintain they did not know each other — with the exception of Abughazaleh and her campaign manager — and were targeted because of their public profiles, though Perry has shut down attempts to dismiss the case based on selective prosecution grounds.
The attorneys said their research hasn’t turned up a single other time in the last 150 years that U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois charged a defendant of conspiring to impede or injure a federal agent.
In a footnote, defense lawyers wrote that they’ve been requesting to see grand jury transcripts for months “based on the government’s novel charging theory in this case and the far-fetched nature of a ‘spontaneous conspiracy’ they somehow convinced a grand jury to go along with.”
But after prosecutors recently asked the court for more time to obtain them, the attorneys speculated in that same footnote that “the government never even checked to see how they actually instructed the grand jury on the law in a case they were using a statute for the first time in this District.”
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