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The Department of Justice has brought federal charges against Illinois House candidate Kat Abughazaleh and five other activists for protesting outside of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago.
The 11-page indictment, which was filed on October 23 and unsealed Wednesday, accuses Abughazaleh and the other protesters of using “force, intimidation and threat” as part of a conspiracy to prevent an unnamed ICE agent from “discharging his duties” and to “injure him in his person or property.”
The conspiracy, as the charging document describes it, involves allegations that the protesters “banged aggressively” on a federal agent’s car, “crowded together in the front and side of the Government Vehicle and pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement,” and “scratched the body of the Government Vehicle, including etching a message into the body of the vehicle, specifically the word ‘PIG.’”
“This is a political prosecution and a gross attempt at silencing dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment,” wrote Abughazaleh, in a statement to The Intercept. “This case is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up. That’s why I’m going to fight these unjust charges.”
The indictment alleges that Abughazaleh, a former journalist and candidate in the Democratic primary for Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, put her hands on the hood of the car and “braced her body and hands against the vehicle while remaining directly in the path of the vehicle.”
The disruption, according to the indictment, forced the federal agent “to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators.”
If convicted, the protesters could face up to six years in prison for the conspiracy charges and eight years in prison for the intimidation charge. Conspiracy charges are a common tool for prosecutors to use against protesters.
Abughazaleh — who went viral earlier this year after video emerged of ICE agents slamming the 26-year-old Democratic candidate to the ground at the same facility — pointed to the irony of the Trump administration accusing protesters of violence.
“As I and others exercised our First Amendment rights, ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters, myself included. Simply because we had the gall to say masked men abducting our neighbors and terrorizing our community cannot be the new normal,” she wrote.
The Broadview ICE processing center has been noted for its violent clashes between federal agents and protesters — with ICE agents deploying aggressive tactics at demonstrators — including an infamous incident where agents shot a pastor in the back of the head with a pepper ball.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order against federal agents in the Chicago area earlier this month, requiring them to wear a body camera and give at least two advanced warnings before deploying tear gas.
Abughazaleh, who is running in a crowded field to replace Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said she won’t be intimidated by the charges brought against her. “I’ve spent my career fighting America’s backwards slide towards fascism, and I’m not going to give up now,” she wrote.
