Judge stunned by DOJ conduct in Illinois anti-ICE protest prosecution dismisses ‘Broadview Six’ charges

All members of the “Broadview Six” group of anti-ICE protestors in Chicago, including former congressional candidate Kat Abughazelah, were cleared of charges on Thursday after alleged misconduct by federal prosecutors came to light in grand jury transcripts, including critical redactions.

“Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made,” U.S. District Judge April Perry said in scathing remarks during a closed hearing on Thursday. “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

After the closed hearing, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros announced that all remaining charges against the Six — who were originally indicted in October 2025 for protesting outside the Broadview ICE Detention Center the prior month — had been dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.

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The case drew national attention in part because Abughazelah, a progressive political influencer and former congressional candidate, had become a prominent online voice criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies, while the prosecution itself emerged amid escalating federal crackdowns on anti-ICE protests nationwide.

An eye-opening transcript of the closed hearing was made public on Thursday night, revealing that Boutros claimed to be “unaware” of much of his office’s alleged misconduct during the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment, telling Perry, “It is my very sincere belief, Your Honor, that no prosecutor acted intentionally in misleading you, and that there was no desire to mislead the Court and no deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecutors.”

In response to these claims of ignorance, Perry told Boutros that he was “significantly undercutting [his] mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants.”

The decision to drop the charges came shortly before a trial was scheduled to begin next Tuesday. Legal experts were still reviewing the 60-page transcript Thursday night, but a review by The Advocate suggests the hearing amounted to a blistering rebuke of the federal prosecutors who pursued the case. Among the most consequential revelations is that an initial grand jury did not return an indictment — an outcome known as a “no true bill” — prompting prosecutors to convene a second grand jury.

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If true, the allegations suggest prosecutors improperly attempted to secure an indictment from the second grand jury after the first returned a “no true bill.”

At the start of her closed-door remarks to prosecutors, Perry noted that there were “significantly bigger problems than misinstructions to the grand jurors” and that “several potential issues jumped out at [her] immediately and glaringly” when she reviewed the full, unredacted grand jury transcripts.

First, she said she found evidence of alleged “vouching” to grand jurors — a practice in which prosecutors stake their reputation on a case to attempt to sway the outcome.

Second, she noted “improper prosecutorial communications of a substantive nature with the grand jurors outside of the grand jury room” and, subsequently, “the prosecutor excusing grand jurors who disagreed with the government’s case from the deliberations process.”

If true, this would be a shockingly illegal attempt to secure a desired outcome from the second grand jury after the first returned the “no true bill.”

All of this, Perry said, was edited out of the grand jury transcripts she initially received.

“And frankly, it is that that I find the most problematic,” the judge said in a frank rebuke. “Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us. But as I tell my children, you own it. You admit to it. You apologize for it, and you move on. What you do not do is hide it.”

Perry noted that “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations” could be forthcoming, and the potential legal fallout of Thursday’s revelations will become clearer in the coming days.

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According to a court docket entry on Thursday, the government also agreed to either remove the press release announcing the charges against the defendants from its website or add a disclaimer noting that the case had since been dismissed. The court additionally vacated the trial date and ordered further briefing on whether portions of the grand jury colloquies should be unsealed.

Following the hearing, defense attorney Chris Parente, who previously worked as a federal prosecutor for 15 years, said, “I have never even heard of something as bad as what took place in this grand jury session,” in comments reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Charges against two members of the Broadview Six — musician Joselyn Walsh and former Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp — were dropped in March, but Thursday’s events will allow the remaining four to move on from a monthslong legal battle. Though, as Abughazelah noted amid an otherwise celebratory day for the protestors, they will not do so unscathed.

“All of us are normal people, and we have been subjected to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and immeasurable stress,” Abughazelah told CBS News. “The point is financial and psychological torture. That's what this government is trying to do.”