Federal prosecutors on Thursday dropped conspiracy charges they’d filed against two of six people who protested outside a suburban immigration holding facility last fall, including a former Cook County Board candidate who dropped out of Tuesday’s primary to fight the charges.
The group of defendants known as the “Broadview Six” will be down to four assuming U.S. District Judge April Perry grants the motion filed by federal prosecutors. It seeks to drop charges against Catherine “Cat” Sharp and musician Joselyn Walsh.
“As the United States attorney’s office does in every case, the government has continued to evaluate new facts, evidence, and information to ensure that the interests of justice are served,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan wrote in Thursday’s motion.
“Accordingly, the United States hereby moves to dismiss with prejudice the indictment against Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh, in the interests of justice,” he added.
Still charged are congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt and Andre Martin. They are accused of a conspiracy to impede a federal officer.
Abughazaleh is seeking the Democratic nomination for Illinois’ 9th District congressional seat in Tuesday’s primary.
The news comes after prosecutors said they planned to narrow and review the conspiracy case against the group. It means Sharp and Walsh will join an ever-growing list of people who have been cleared after being charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to Operation Midway Blitz.
It is also a significant blow to the last remaining high-profile prosecution tied to the immigration campaign.
Federal prosecutors in Chicago accused 32 known defendants of nonimmigration crimes. Once Perry grants the new motion pertaining to Sharp and Walsh, 19 of the 32 will have been cleared. No member of the group has been convicted, so far.
The cleared defendants include Marimar Martinez, the woman shot five times by a Border Patrol agent last October on the Southwest Side. Prosecutors dropped the case against her in November.
A jury also cleared Juan Espinoza Martinez in January after he’d been accused of offering $10,000 for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino. Immigration authorities took Espinoza Martinez into custody after his acquittal and have held him ever since.
But federal prosecution still comes at a cost, even when charges are ultimately abandoned. In Sharp’s case, that includes the suspension of her campaign for Cook County Board so she could focus on her legal defense.
“To be a single person, being up against the Trump administration and the federal government, is hugely stressful and has interrupted my ability to really be able to run a campaign that I’m proud of,” Sharp told the Chicago Sun-Times in January.
Sharp was running as a Democrat for the Cook County Board’s 12th District seat. The other three Democratic politicians charged in the conspiracy case remain under indictment.
The remaining Broadview conspiracy defendants are set for trial May 26. The charges revolve around events on the morning of Sept. 26 outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview.
An indictment alleges that, while an agent drove a vehicle toward the facility, the six defendants and others surrounded it. Members of the crowd allegedly banged on the vehicle, pushed against it, scratched it and even etched the word “PIG” into it.
The crowd allegedly broke a side mirror and a rear windshield wiper and forced the agent “to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed.”
Prosecutors recently agreed to strike certain language from the indictment, though. They also acknowledged during a recent hearing that the timeframe of the alleged conspiracy is limited to Sept. 26, that it was “spontaneous” with no evidence of an explicit agreement, and that all potential co-conspirators were present in Broadview at the time.
Defense attorneys have said a key issue at trial could be the agent’s “decision and motivation to drive his vehicle into a crowd of more than 50 individuals who were peacefully protesting the documented atrocities occurring inside the Broadview facility.”
They’ve said their clients and others were engaged in a “Jericho Walk” supervised by local police, who helped traffic safely pass through the demonstration.
Eventually a Ford Expedition driven by an ICE agent turned “directly” into the crowd, according to the defense filings. There is no evidence the ICE agent waited for police assistance but opted instead to “drive directly into where the crowd was gathered,” defense attorneys say.