By HANNAH MEISEL
& MAGGIE DOUGHERTY
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO — Six Chicago-area progressive candidates, officeholders and activists pleaded not guilty Wednesday on charges alleging they “impeded” a federal agent during a September protest outside of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in suburban Broadview.
The group, which includes 9th congressional district candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, were indicted last month on a felony conspiracy charge alleging they conspired to “interrupt, hinder, and impede” the agent from the “discharge of his official duties.” They also face charges for misdemeanor simple assault of a federal officer, which does not require physical contact.
But as they have since the indictment was made public two weeks ago, the defendants on Wednesday maintained the charges are a spurious attempt by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to intimidate those who oppose the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.
“Expressing your First Amendment rights is not a conspiracy and dissent is not a crime,” Abughazaleh told reporters Wednesday after an arraignment hearing. “Do you want to live in a country where you can’t speak out against injustice without fearing the law? Where your children could be the next one in that courtroom for standing up for what they believe in?”
The charges stem from a late September demonstration at the height of protests outside the ICE facility, a few weeks into the Trump administration’s Chicago-area immigration enforcement surge campaign dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.” As of last month, roughly 3,300 people had been arrested locally as part of the administration’s ramped-up enforcement efforts. Though that number is likely much higher now, government attorneys did not provide an updated figure for total arrests at a separate hearing earlier Wednesday in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
Of the 50 to 100 protesters present at the Sept. 26 demonstration, more than a dozen were captured on video — including footage posted to Abughazaleh’s social media accounts — surrounding a vehicle driven by a federal agent into the ICE facility’s property, banging on its hood and windows while the agent drove slowly through the crowd.
Federal prosecutors also allege the vehicle’s windshield wipers were broken in the confrontation and someone scratched the word “PIG” on its side, but Abughazaleh attorney Joshua Herman bemoaned the amount of media attention on the alleged vandalism “as none of the individuals who are charged are accused of doing any of that damage” outlined in the indictment.
He also accused the Trump administration of targeting his client and her co-defendants because of their loud criticism amplified by their public profiles.
Abughazaleh, who was a progressive influencer long before she leveraged her audience to launch a congressional campaign earlier this year, has more than 250,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter, and is approaching 180,000 on Instagram.
Others indicted include Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp, who has been active in progressive politics for years and currently serves as chief of staff to Chicago Ald. Andre Vasquez, (40), Democratic Ward Committeeman Michael Rabbitt, a former candidate for the Illinois House, and Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw.
At one point, Straw’s attorney Christopher Parente objected to his client having to surrender his passport, briefly monologuing that Straw’s motivation for protesting in Broadview was in part driven by federal agents’ “demanding of passport and citizenship papers for people who appear to be of a certain skin color.” After the objection, U.S. Magistrate Judge Heather McShain consented to letting all six defendants keep their passports.
Also indicted were Andre Martin, Abughazaleh’s deputy campaign manager, and Joselyn Walsh, who does not work in politics, but performed songs during protests at Broadview. During that same Sept. 26 demonstration, federal agents shot a rubber bullet through her guitar.
Walsh brought that same guitar downtown Wednesday, reprising her protest performances during a post-arraignment rally in Federal Plaza, across from the courthouse.
“This is for our people who are locked inside,” Walsh sang, referring to detainees at Broadview. “Together, we will defend our rights.”
A crowd also gathered outside the courthouse ahead of the hearing, with approximately 50 people chanting, “We support the Broadview Six!”
Conspiracy charges
Herman blasted the felony conspiracy charge as “absurd” and said it “poses great risk to anybody who dares to protest.”
“Simply by standing together — people who don’t even know each other — by being next to each other and having a common First Amendment position and opposition and dissent becomes a conspiracy,” he said. “If we have to take that to trial, we will gladly take that to trial, and we will win.”
To prove a conspiracy charge, which carries a maximum of six years in prison and a $250,000 fine, prosecutors have to prove intent that a group of people agreed to act in concert. And while the burden of proof for the charge is not a particularly high bar, government lawyers haven’t routinely hit protesters with conspiracy charges in modern history.
But conspiracy prosecutions against those active in “social movements” are “on the rise,” according to a February 2025 paper from the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.
Last year, San Francisco’s district attorney charged more than two dozen pro-Palestinian protesters with conspiracy charges for blocking traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge to bring attention to protest Israel’s military action against Gaza. Some of those charges were eventually dismissed. In 2023, Georgia’s attorney general charged 61 activists under state racketeering law, alleging their sustained protests against to the construction of a $100 million police training center known as “Cop City” in Atlanta was tantamount to criminal conspiracy, though a judge dismissed all the charges in September after a two-year legal battle.
Other non-federal conspiracy prosecutions for protest and protest-adjacent actions have been more successful, however. Last year, a San Diego jury convicted a pair of anti-fascist protesters on “conspiracy to riot” charges stemming from their 2021 counter-protest against a Proud Boys rally that turned confrontational. The right-wing groups were not charged. And late last month, a Northern California jury convicted an animal rights activist on conspiracy and trespassing charges after she took four chickens from a processing plant in 2023.
The Trump DOJ’s experimentation with federal conspiracy charges is still in its infancy, but many stemming from protests against the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles this summer have already fallen apart.
In June, federal prosecutors charged a woman with conspiracy to impede an officer after she got between a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent and a man he was trying to arrest during a protest, but that charge has since been dismissed and replaced by an “accessory” to “assault” misdemeanor.
Also in early June, a prominent California labor leader was arrested during another protest and hit with a felony conspiracy charge for sitting in front of a gate to a staging ground for ICE operations and encouraging other protesters to join him in blocking vehicles, though prosecutors dropped the conspiracy charge last month.
In mid-June, FBI agents arrested a man who’d handed out face shields to Los Angeles protesters on a felony charge of “conspiracy to commit civil disorders” but the DOJ dropped the entire case in July.
So far, though, federal conspiracy charges seem to be sticking in a case stemming from a June demonstration in Spokane, Washington. In July, FBI agents arrested nine protesters on charges they conspired to impede or injure federal immigration agents. According to prosecutors, the group vandalized a bus and a van, blocking both from leaving an ICE detention facility to its destination in Tacoma, where detainees on board were headed to immigration hearings. A trial in that case is scheduled for May, according to court records.
But the Trump administration’s most successful act related to protest conspiracy charges is probably the president’s January order granting blanket clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged and convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Of that total, 57 were charged with conspiracy, including 14 who were either convicted or pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, but now have been pardoned.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
