If the remaining members of the “Broadview Six” head to trial next week, federal prosecutors have already agreed not to slap them with labels like “rioters,” “domestic terrorists” or “Antifa members.”
But they might say they were part of a “mob.”
U.S. District Judge April Perry refused to bar the term Monday. She told defense attorneys the word is “fine, it is not a big deal.” And she said they’d be allowed to argue to jurors their own characterizations of the crowd that formed around an immigration agent’s vehicle Sept. 26.
But a hearing held in Perry’s courtroom Monday revolved around the larger question of whether prosecutors will try to hold the four demonstrators accountable at trial for their own actions — or the crowd’s. In fact, the judge pressed the feds on that very question minutes after she agreed they could say “mob.”
When a prosecutor said he had no intention of trying to convict the four based on the actions of others, she told him it “very much” sounded like he’d argued otherwise. She ultimately said she’d hold the feds to their word.
The case is one of the most highly publicized prosecutions to result from last fall’s Operation Midway Blitz deportation campaign. That’s because it began as a conspiracy case against six people who protested outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview.
But the feds dropped charges against two of the original six, and then they abandoned the conspiracy charge altogether. Now, four people face one misdemeanor count each of forcibly impeding a federal agent.
Charged are former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson Michael Rabbitt and Andre Martin, who served as a member of Abughazaleh’s campaign staff.
The latest charging document in the case, filed April 29, does not offer specific allegations against the defendants. Generally, they’ve been accused of joining a larger group of protesters who surrounded an ICE agent’s vehicle and pushed, scratched and otherwise damaged it as it approached the facility in Broadview.
Federal prosecutors raised eyebrows last week when, despite dropping the conspiracy charge, they argued in a brief that “all the actions by all the members of the mob were clearly foreseeable to each of them. They are all therefore responsible for [their fellow protesters’] conduct.”
“The government’s theory in this case has always been that the defendants were part of a mob that impeded, intimidated, and interfered with [the agent] on September 26, 2025, and … are therefore each accountable for the foreseeable acts of their joint venturers, charged or not,” prosecutors wrote in a filing Thursday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan told the judge Monday, “we’re seeking to hold them accountable for the damage that was perpetrated or caused to the vehicle.”
But Perry told him, “you’re going to need some aiding and abetting [jury] instructions, and you didn’t propose them.”
The judge went on to clarify a defense argument for Hogan. She told him the defense hoped to stop his team from seeking the defendants’ convictions because someone else had pounded on the agent’s car.
“We’re not,” Hogan told the judge.
“That is very much like what your motions sounded like, and what you were saying earlier,” Perry replied.
Earlier in the hearing, Hogan also told the judge, “we’re not going to say that they’re guilty of impeding this agent because some other people in the crowd were saying ‘F the police.’”
Abughazaleh attorney Josh Herman replied, “can we get that in an order, please?”
The trial is set to begin May 26 and could last roughly two weeks. Perry said 90 potential jurors would be called to the Dirksen Federal Courthouse for the case. The judge said she’s “very much hoping that jury selection doesn’t take days and days.”
But, she added, “I know it’s going to be challenging.”
She also agreed to review an unredacted transcript from grand jury proceedings in the case, at the urging of defense attorneys. It’s the same transcript she’d asked prosecutors to bring to a hearing late last month.
When that hearing began, prosecutors announced that they’d be abandoning the grand jury’s indictment and would instead level misdemeanor charges in a separate charging document. Perry concluded at the time that she didn’t need to see the transcript, but the episode raised the suspicions of defense attorneys.
Finally, Perry on Monday rejected a request from defense attorneys that jurors be taken to Broadview so they could view the scene of the alleged crime. Not only would such a “field trip” be incredibly rare, she said, the “risk of something going wrong is massive.”
That’s because jurors would be in an uncontrolled, public place during a highly publicized trial.
But prosecutors had not objected to the outing, so Perry said she appreciated that the two sides had at least found something they could agree on.
That’s when Hogan clarified the feds’ position.
He said it was “more of a ‘we don’t care.’”