Justice Department Charges Illinois Congressional Candidate Kat Abughazaleh Over Anti-ICE Protests

A former journalist and current Democratic congressional candidate in Illinois was indicted last week, along with five others, for protests they attended against immigration officials.

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old congressional candidate, and other protesters were indicted on Oct. 23 by a special federal grand jury and are accused of blocking vehicles outside a federal immigration processing facility in Broadview last month.

The indictment accuses Abughazaleh and the other defendants — Andre Martin, Michael Rabbitt, Catherine Sharp, Brian Straw and Joselyn Walsh — of conspiring with each other when they “physically impeded and impeded” the vehicle of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent during a Sept. 26 protest outside the processing facility.

The officer was “forced to drive at an extremely slow speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators,” the indictment says.

Martin, one of the defendants, works on Abughazaleh’s campaign as a field director.

Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune via Getty Images

Video posted by Abughazaleh on social media that day shows her and other protesters standing in front of the officer’s vehicle, unarmed and chanting “Down, down with deportation.” Protesters banged on the hood of the vehicle and threw some stuffed animals on it. Abughazaleh said she and her fellow protesters were walking “across a public crosswalk.”

“At the Broadview ICE facility, an ICE agent attempted to run over dozens of protesters with a van as we walked through a public crosswalk,” he posted. “He kept driving through a full football field until ICE bombarded us with pepper balls.”

The prosecution accuses protesters of beating “aggressively on the side and rear windows, hood and other body parts of the government vehicle; piled up at the front and side of the government vehicle and pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement; scratched the body of the government vehicle, including etching a message into the body of the vehicle, specifically the word ‘PIG’; broke one of the side mirrors of the government vehicle; and broke a rear windshield wiper of the government vehicle.”

Abughazaleh is represented by Chicago attorney Josh Herman, who told News themezone in a statement that the impeachment is a “political prosecution that attempts to turn dissent and First Amendment opposition to the Trump administration’s cruel policies into a conspiracy.”

“Kat has steadfastly opposed those policies and will fight these charges with the same principled resolve,” Herman added.

Abughazaleh had a run-in with ICE agents at the facility just a week earlier when a masked agent was seen on video grabbing her forcefully and violently throwing her to the ground during a protest.

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During the same protest on September 19, federal agents fired tear gas and pepper balls at the protesters. Abughazaleh told News themezone at the time that an officer told him, “Your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk.”

In a video statement posted on social media Wednesday, Abughazaleh said he “will not back down.”

“While I and others have exercised our First Amendment rights, ICE has beaten, dragged, thrown, pepper-balled, and tear-gassed hundreds of protesters, simply because we had the nerve to say that masked men entering our communities, kidnapping our neighbors, and terrorizing us cannot be our new model,” Abughazaleh said in the video.

“And because Chicago won’t back down from masked thugs launching tear gas into our neighborhoods, this administration has resorted to weaponizing the federal justice system to scare us into silence,” he continued. “But we are not going to remain silent. The Trump administration wants you to be afraid to speak out against it and its undemocratic power grabs. And there are many reasons to be afraid right now, but we have to overcome that fear.”

Abughazaleh said immigration officials and the Trump administration are scared and know what they are doing is wrong.

“This case targets our rights to protest, speak freely and associate with anyone who disagrees with the government,” he said. “And while we have seen the deranged and illegal tactics this administration has used against the American public, it is important to remember that they are doing this because they They are scared, they They are wrong and they know it. they “They are on the wrong side of history.”