Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw appeared in U.S. District court again Wednesday morning alongside his five co-defendants for a hearing in the federal conspiracy case that’s emerged from their participation in a protest at the Broadview ICE Detention Facility last fall.
With the judge close to naming a start date for what will likely be a lengthy jury trial, opposing counsels argued over case procedures during a status hearing inside a downtown federal courtroom packed with roughly 60 observers. Attorneys discussed what the judge called a “flurry of motions” filed by the defense in recent days, along with the defense’s plans to challenge the case on first amendment and selective prosecution grounds.
Straw is one of several progressive political figures facing a felony conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer charge in connection with a confrontation between anti-ICE protestors and a vehicle driven by a federal law enforcement agent during an early morning protest outside the Broadview ICE Detention Facility last September, according to U.S. Northern District of Illinois court documents. Straw’s co-defendants in the case are 9th District U.S. Congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, Chicago aldermanic staffer Catherine “Cat” Sharp, 45th ward Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbit, musician Joselyn Walsh and Andre Martin, who works on Abughazaleh’s campaign staff.
The indictment alleged that Straw and his co-defendants were among a crowd of protestors who blocked, pushed against and banged on a vehicle being driven by a federal agent into ICE’s Broadview Detention Facility the morning of Sept. 26. The prosecution said a side mirror and a windshield wiper on the agent’s vehicle were damaged in the incident and the car was vandalized, but none of the indicted individuals are alleged to have caused the damage themselves.
The so-called “Broadview Six” are among 32 known defendants to be charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago’s federal court. Fifteen of those defendants have already been cleared, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg is leading the prosecution, with U.S. Judge April Perry presiding on the matter.
The jury trial in the case could begin as soon as Monday, May 11, with the trial expected to take at least seven days, attorneys said. Joshua Herman, attorney for Abughazaleh, said that the defense has pushed for as quick a trial date as possible with the hopes of giving their clients as quick a return to their regular lives and work as possible. Sharp recently dropped her bid for a Cook County board seat, citing the mounting stress of the case.
The defense said they are also seeking a speedy trial in light of the tense climate surrounding federal immigration agents’ interactions with protestors and activists, intensified by the recent killings of activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis this month, Herman said.
“We want to bring this case to trial sooner because everything happening in our country right now with DHS,” Herman said. “What this case would ultimately do is expose one more overreach: the misuse of this conspiracy statute against demonstrators exercising their first amendment rights. We’re all on the same page of if we can’t get this case dismissed, which we think it should be, we’re going to take it to trial.”
Straw’s attorney Chris Parente told reporters after the hearing that the prosecution is a waste of the Justice Department’s time and that the government is trying to invent a criminal conspiracy case out of people simply taking part in the same protest without prior coordination.
“That is an attempt by this administration, and potentially this U.S. Attorney’s office, to silence legitimate peaceful protest,” said Parente, who is an Oak Park resident. “The government will acknowledge that none of the six people charged did any of the damage they’re claiming. There’s no allegation against these six, it was other people at the protest.”
“This is nothing more than a state disorderly conduct case. We’re talking about broken windshield wipers and you have a public corruption senior level (Assistant U.S. Attorney) who’s going to spend the next six months responding to motions and putting on a full weeklong trial over this? Why are we doing that, why is the office putting those resources on a case like this when we have human trafficking, child predators, public corruption and every other kind of crime going on in this city that we know about? Why are we devoting time to a DHS broken windshield wiper? It makes no sense.”
During the hearing, the defense objected to the state’s proposed protective order requiring that the defense not disseminate anything provided by the state in future discovery materials. Mecklenburg said the government wanted to impose that restriction to protect officers’ identities and prevent defendants from using body camera footage related to the incident in social media posts or campaign materials.
“I don’t want body camera footage on their social media, I want to try this case in the courtroom and not in the media,” Mecklenburg said.
Parente said the ask was hypocritical seeing that the state had announced the co-defendant’s indictment with a press release featuring quotes from leading Department of Justice officials.
“Her office issued a press release with quotes from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Parente said. “There’s no reason to do that unless you’re trying the case in the media.”
“Your indignation is noted for the record,” Judge Perry said in response.
Attorneys for the defense also invoked the unrest playing out in Minneapolis as reason why the case materials are of significant public interest.
“You don’t have to look farther than the past two-and-a-half weeks of news to know that this is important to the public,” said Terence Campbell, the attorney for Martin. “How federal law enforcement officers, from ICE and Homeland Security, are behaving and acting and whether they are instigators.”
The defense also disputed the government’s offer for an evidence preservation order, asking that all video evidence from Broadview ICE protests from two days before Sept. 26 to two days after be preserved by law enforcement. The state had initially offered to preserve footage from only an hour before the incident.
Judge Perry said that the relevant footage is likely already being preserved, considering the volume of federal civil cases playing out related to the Broadview ICE protests.
If the defense and prosecution don’t come to an agreement on the preservation order and the protective order over the next week, the judge will rule on the disputes at another status hearing set for Thursday, Feb. 5.
If that hearing isn’t needed, the next court date for the case will be Thursday, Feb. 26.
The defense also recently motioned for the prosecution to produce a bill of particulars, a document outlining the specifics of a criminal allegation in detail.
“This motion is compelled by the extraordinary nature of the broad and vague conspiracy charge that the government has brought against defendants under 18 U.S.C. §372, a rarely invoked conspiracy statute that the current administration has used and threaten to use against others, ranging from protestors to sitting politicians, who have voiced disagreement with and expressed opposition to its policies, especially its aggressive immigration enforcement actions,” the defense wrote in that motion. “The government’s retort that defendants should merely look at the discovery for answers falls flat. There has been nothing produced in discovery showing any connection between defendants and any of those other individuals, beyond being engaged in First Amendment protest outside the Broadview Facility. This unique factual context heightens the need for the requested Bill of Particulars.”
During the hearing, the defense reiterated its previous commitment to filing motions to have the case thrown out on first amendment and selective prosecution grounds.
“These six individuals were targeted for very specific reasons,” Herman told the judge.
