“Mr. Briggs, you’re free to go,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Fuentes said in his courtroom in Chicago on the morning of November 20. He had just dismissed the assault case against Dana Briggs, a seventy-year-old veteran who was arrested while protesting outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois on September 27.
The government initially charged Briggs with felony assault on a law enforcement official (specifically, a Border Patrol agent) but would eventually downgrade his charge to a misdemeanor. And on the morning of November 20, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss.
With a bang of his gavel, Fuentes obliged.
Briggs was one of five people the government pursued criminal cases against in the aftermath of the September 27 protest. The group also included an intellectually disabled Black man named Paul Ivery who was convinced to waive his right to remain silent while he was in federal custody without a lawyer present. All five cases were eventually tossed out of court.
But that’s just a piece of the Justice Department’s losing streak in Chicago and around the country, as protests continue to mount against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
In the Chicago area, criminal complaints against at least thirteen Midway Blitz-related defendants have been thrown out since October, when some of the first cases were heard.
“As the United States Attorney has stated repeatedly in his public comments, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is constantly evaluating new facts and information relating to cases and investigations arising out of Operation Midway Blitz, the largest ever law enforcement surge in the Northern District of Illinois,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick said in a prepared statement on the matter. “This continuous review process applies to all matters—whether charged or under investigation.”
A similar trend has played out in California. The Los Angeles Times reported at the start of December that federal prosecutors in the Los Angeles area have charged seventy-one people with assault on a federal officer so far this year, with twenty-one cases ending in dismissals or acquittals. Few of the remaining cases related to immigration protests have thus far resulted in convictions. The Weekly was able to independently verify four guilty pleas out of the LA area, three of which, according to court records, were the result of deals struck with prosecutors. In two trials that took place in September and October, California juries acquitted two people accused of misdemeanor assault on federal officers. Multiple cases are set for trial in 2026.
A federal jury in Los Angeles County acquitted Brayan Ramos-Brito, the defendant in the case that went to trial in September, of striking a Border Patrol agent in June—despite Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino testifying he witnessed it happen. Video presented to the jury reportedly did not corroborate Bovino’s testimony.
A jury in Washington, D.C. similarly acquitted former Justice Department employee Sean Dunn last month on a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from his much-memed throwing of a Subway sandwich at a Border Patrol agent in August.
Here in Chicago, the feds charged Marimar Martinez, along with Anthony Santos Ruiz, for allegedly blocking in and striking a Border Patrol vehicle in Brighton Park on October 4. Martinez’s attorney, Chris Parente, criticized federal prosecutors’ rush to charge her.
District Judge Georgia Alexakis dismissed the high-profile case on November 20 after defense raised numerous issues challenging the prosecution in court. Border Patrol agent Charles Exum shot Martinez during the October 4 incident, leaving her with wounds that were visible during a court appearance a few days later. Parente claimed video showed Exum telling Martinez “do something, bitch,” before shooting her, and evidence was later released that showed he bragged about the shooting in text messages. Parente also said Exum took the vehicle Martinez allegedly struck to Maine before defense counsel had a chance to examine it.
“Because you’re moving at this quick speed for some reason, you’re just charging people and changing their lives before you actually check the veracity of the claims, and that’s not how the Department of Justice is supposed to act, in my opinion,” Parente said.
Before the problems with Martinez’s and Santos Ruiz’s case came out at court, a grand jury indicted the pair. A grand jury is a group of jurors the government convenes to determine if there’s enough evidence to proceed with a criminal case. Federal prosecutors don’t have to present all the available evidence in a case to a grand jury, only the evidence they think will sway the jurors to issue an indictment.
In a separate case, a grand jury refused to indict Ray Collins and Jocelyne Robledo, who also faced criminal charges over the September 27 protest at Broadview.
“It is very rare that a grand jury will refuse to indict when a prosecutor comes before them and recommends charges. It’s just so uncommon,” said Alexa Van Brunt, attorney and policy director for the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago. “And the fact this is happening not just in Chicago regularly but in other cities regularly, it’s just evidence to the fact that I think this Department of Justice has lost credibility with the general public.”
With so many cases falling apart, particularly in Chicago, the court itself has questioned why the government is pursuing them so aggressively.
“The Court cannot help but note just how unusual and possibly unprecedented it is for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in this district to charge so hastily that it either could not obtain the indictment in the grand jury or was forced to dismiss upon a conclusion that the case is not provable, in repeated cases of a similar nature,” Judge Fuentes wrote in a court memo following the dismissal of Briggs’ case.
The judge made his comments while setting aside “the extraordinary judicial determinations that DHS sworn declarations are unreliable, that the candor of its agents is open to question, and that sworn testimony of its CBP chief contained knowing falsehoods,” the memo reads.
Parente and Van Brunt attributed the aggressive prosecution to pressure from the Trump administration, which has made mass deportation a key policy initiative. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has made a point of threatening federal prosecution against those who oppose deportation actions.
“Anyone who threatens or assaults our federal officers will be arrested and charged federally, not in some liberal state court,” Bondi said in a video statement on X (formerly Twitter) on September 27.
In a separate Justice Department memo Bondi issued September 29, she instructed U.S. attorneys in Oregon and the Chicago area to charge “every person suspected of threatening or assaulting a federal law enforcement officer or interfering with federal law enforcement operations” with “the highest provable offense available under the law.”
Another LA Times story from July indicated U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli, the Trump-appointed acting head of the Central California DOJ office and former Republican State Assembly member, has been feeling the pressure himself—reportedly “screaming” at a subordinate prosecutor and telling him to secure more indictments, per Bondi’s directions.
Regardless of pressure from above, government attorneys are theoretically expected to prosecute cases responsibly and not subject people to criminal proceedings unnecessarily. The U.S. Justice Manual states that “evidence sufficient to sustain a conviction is required under Rule 29(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to avoid a judgment of acquittal.”
“Moreover, both as a matter of fundamental fairness and in the interest of the efficient administration of justice, no prosecution should be initiated against any person unless the attorney for the government believes that the admissible evidence is sufficient to obtain and sustain a guilty verdict by an unbiased trier of fact,” the manual continues.
Fuentes, in his Briggs memo, congratulated the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) in Chicago for “doing the right thing” in not objecting to the dismissal.
Federal prosecutors in Chicago are still pursuing criminal charges against Juan Espinoza Martinez, who is accused of placing a bounty on Greg Bovino. They are also pursuing charges against the “Broadview Six,” a group including Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, local Democratic Committeeman Michael Rabbitt, Chicago 40th Ward Chief of Staff (and Cook County Board candidate) Catherine Sharp, Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, and two others in connection with a September 26 protest at the Broadview ICE facility.
Parente, a former federal prosecutor himself, was hesitant to criticise the individual attorneys working in the Chicago USAO. He commended the head U.S. Attorney for the Chicago area, Andrew Boutros, for moving to dismiss Martinez’s case in November.
“[Boutros is] getting it right…when he’s dismissing the Martinez case and these other cases, it’s because he recognizes there’s huge problems,” Parente said. “I just wish they would go back to the system of investigating first.”
Dave Byrnes is a Chicago-born independent journalist covering the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant blitz. He lives in Lincoln Square, but is a lifelong White Sox fan.