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Demonstrators protesting outside the U.S Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility, including Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, 26, left, react after being tear-gassed on September 19, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois
“If their goal was to silence me, they picked the wrong person,” she told The Advocate.
A federal judge in Illinois on Wednesday unsealed a federal indictment charging Illinois Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh with two federal crimes, naming her among six people accused of obstructing law enforcement during a protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, near Chicago. She told The Advocate that the Trump Justice Department "picked the wrong person" to try to intimidate.
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Abughazaleh, 26, faces one count of conspiracy to impede a federal officer and one count of forcibly interfering with a federal officer. The Trump Justice Department indictment, returned by a grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois, also charges five other defendants. Prosecutors allege that the group surrounded an ICE agent’s vehicle during a September 26 protest, preventing the agent “by force, intimidation, and threat” from performing official duties.
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According to the October 23 indictment, the protesters banged on the car’s windows, scratched the exterior, broke a side mirror, and etched the word “PIG” into the vehicle’s body. Each defendant faces up to eight years in prison on the obstruction charge and up to five years on the conspiracy charge if convicted. The case, United States v. Rabbitt et al., is assigned to U.S. District Judge April M. Perry, who was appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden.
A progressive Democrat running in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Abughazaleh is a Palestinian American and outspoken LGBTQ+ rights advocate who has emerged as a rising figure on the left. Earlier this month, the bisexual candidate was named to Out magazine’s 2025 Out100 list of “Disruptors,” which celebrates changemakers reshaping queer culture. Out is a sibling publication of The Advocate, both owned by equalpride.
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In her Out profile, Abughazaleh said her campaign was driven by “a desire to resist authoritarianism and shamelessly advocate for a better life for the 99 percent.” Before entering politics, she gained national attention as a media analyst tracking right-wing extremism and online misinformation.
In a video posted to social media on Wednesday afternoon, Abughazaleh denounced the prosecution as “a gross attempt to silence dissent” and “a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest.”
“This is a political prosecution,” she said. “The Trump administration wants you to be afraid of speaking out against it, and its anti-democratic power threats.” She accused federal authorities of using the justice system “to scare us into silence” after months of escalating confrontations between ICE and immigrant-rights activists.
Abughazaleh said she and others were targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights. “ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters simply because we had the gall to say that masked men coming into our communities, abducting our neighbors, and terrorizing us cannot be our new normal,” she said. Abughazaleh concluded her message by pledging to fight the case and continue her campaign: “I have spent my career fighting America’s backslide into fascism. I’m not going to stop now, and I hope you won’t either.”
In a phone interview with The Advocate following the video’s release, Abughazaleh said she views the indictment as “a clear infringement on our First Amendment rights” and “an attempt by the administration to criminalize protest, to get rid of the idea of free association, and to ensure that anyone who disagrees with the government, who who publicly dissents from anything Trump does, will face penalties.”
“This is government overreach,” she said. “I’ve spent my career fighting America’s backslide into fascism. These are the exact types of cases I expected when Trump took power, but it’s still a shock when it becomes reality, and it’s the reality for me now.”
She described what she called “one-sided violence” by federal agents in Chicago, alleging that ICE had “abducted people and doused their neighbors in tear gas” in recent weeks. “We’ve heard reports of people being zip-tied to a tree for hours while others were rounded up,” she told The Advocate, adding that she and others were protesting “the crimes ICE is committing and the conditions at the Broadview facility,” where witnesses had reported detainees being denied water and carried out on stretchers.
Despite facing federal prosecution, Abughazaleh said the charges had only strengthened her resolve. “If their goal was to silence me, they picked the wrong person,” she said. “There are a lot more of us who want the Constitution to exist than there are people who want authoritarian rule.”
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