Federal prosecutors drop charges against Broadview Six after grand jury errors

Federal prosecutors in Chicago abandoned the last charges against the Broadview Six on Thursday after a judge said the grand jury record showed conduct she had “never seen” before, a collapse that turned a high-profile immigration prosecution into a test of prosecutorial accountability.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros told U.S. District Judge April Perry that the dismissal was driven by improper handling of the grand jury proceedings by the lead prosecutor. Boutros said he had only recently learned of the alleged misconduct, including a prosecutor meeting with a grand juror outside the normal proceedings and other jurors who disagreed with dismissal being blocked from participating. Perry said she was “incredibly shocked by the redactions” in the transcript and described the conduct as improper “prosecutorial vouching,” in which an assistant U.S. attorney put personal credibility behind the case.

The decision came after a closed-door review of redacted grand jury transcripts and just days before a rare federal misdemeanor trial was set to begin after Memorial Day, a proceeding expected to last about two weeks. The charges were dismissed after the earlier collapse of the case’s felony conspiracy count on May 7, leaving the misdemeanor case as the final piece before prosecutors ended it.

The case traces back to a Sept. 26, 2025 protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois, where dozens of demonstrators surrounded an ICE vehicle that drove through the crowd and banged on its windows. In October 2025, a federal grand jury in Chicago indicted the original six defendants on a felony conspiracy count alleging they conspired to “interrupt, hinder, and impede” a federal immigration agent, along with individual misdemeanor counts. The four remaining defendants are Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin and Brian Straw.

Two other defendants had all charges dropped in March 2026. The case has moved through repeated reversals, with prosecutors first saying on April 29 that they intended to drop the main conspiracy count, then reversing course before Judge Perry dismissed that charge on May 7. The latest dismissal comes as the Broadview arrests continue to feed broader fights over protest policing, federal immigration enforcement and the secrecy that shields grand jury proceedings from public view.

A separate lawsuit filed by four protesters is also challenging the DNA cheek swabs taken after their arrests, calling them an unconstitutional search and seizure tied to surveillance of people exercising First Amendment rights. With the criminal case now gone, the remaining questions are about review, discipline and liability when misconduct inside the justice system becomes the reason a federal prosecution falls apart.