ICE in Chicago: Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh indicted

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Welcome to The Logoff: A federal grand jury in Illinois has indicted six individuals, together with a Democratic congressional candidate, for collaborating in a September protest exterior an ICE facility close to Chicago.

What occurred? The indictment fees six individuals, together with two native elected officers and Kat Abughazaleh, a Democrat operating for Congress on Chicago’s North Shore, with conspiring to intrude with and forcibly impeding a federal agent exterior of an ICE facility within the Chicago suburb of Broadview.

The indictment alleges that, amongst different actions, the individuals charged “bodily hindered and impeded Agent A and the Authorities Car such that Agent A was compelled to drive at an especially sluggish fee of pace to keep away from injuring any of the conspirators.” Video of the confrontation posted to X by Abughazaleh exhibits protesters chanting and trying to dam the automotive.

Protests in opposition to the crackdown have usually centered on the Broadview ICE facility, and peaceable protesters — together with Abughazaleh and members of the clergy — have repeatedly been assaulted and tear-gassed by federal brokers. Such techniques have been beneath rising authorized scrutiny; this week, a Border Patrol official was advised to seem in courtroom every day as a choose scrutinizes use of pressure by brokers.

Why does this matter? This indictment is the most recent in an alarming pattern of protesters, together with elected officers, being focused for prosecution by the Trump administration — on the similar time that federal immigration brokers have functionally been placed above the law .

In Could, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested exterior an ICE facility, and Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was later charged with forcibly impeding an officer; my colleague Ian Millhiser described the McIver indictment as presumably “essentially the most anti-democratic factor [Trump has] completed since January 6.”

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