By Renee Hickman and David Thomas
CHICAGO (Reuters) -Six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, were indicted Wednesday on charges of impeding a federal officer in connection with a September protest at an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois.
The suburban Chicago facility has been a flashpoint since U.S. President Donald Trump launched a stepped-up immigration enforcement operation in the area on September 8. Agents have responded to protests on multiple occasions by deploying tear gas and shooting pepper balls at demonstrators.
In the indictment, prosecutors allege that on September 26, Kat Abughazaleh – a former journalist who is running for a U.S. House seat as a Democrat – and five other activists protesting at the Broadview site crowded around a government vehicle driven by a federal agent, intentionally hindering its progress as the agent tried to drive into the facility.
According to prosecutors, the activists – Abughazaleh and Andre Martin, Michael Rabbitt, Catherine Sharp, Brian Straw and Joselyn Walsh – banged and pushed on the vehicle, scratched the word “pig” into its body, and broke a rear windshield wiper.
Several attorneys for the protesters denied the accusations on Wednesday.
Molly Armour, an attorney for Sharp, who is the chief of staff for Chicago alderperson Andre Vasquez, said the charges against Sharp are an “effort by the Trump administration to frighten people out of participating in protest and exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Attorneys for Rabbitt and Walsh said their clients would plead not guilty to the charges. Abughazaleh told Reuters she would also plead not guilty.
Straw, a member of the Village Board for Chicago suburb Oak Park, said in a statement the charges would not “deter me from fulfilling my oath of office.”
The September 26 protest came weeks after the Trump administration announced the start of “Operation Midway Blitz,” an immigration enforcement campaign it said was needed because of city and state “sanctuary” laws that limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Law enforcement officers have been using the Broadview facility to process detainees, and protests at the site intensified after the Trump administration’s announcement.
Federal agents have shot pepper balls and deployed tear gas at protesters, leading to a lawsuit by journalists, activists and clergy members. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis earlier this month ordered agents involved in the Chicago crackdown to wear visible identification and limit their use of anti-riot weapons such as pepper balls and tear gas.
Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said in a statement that federal officials “must be able to discharge the duties of their office without confronting force, intimidation, or threats.”
The case will appear before U.S. District Judge April Perry, who earlier this month blocked Trump from deploying hundreds of National Guard troops in Chicago.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman and David Thomas in Chicago; Editing by Emily Schmall and Stephen Coates)
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