'Unusual and possibly unprecedented': Judge calls out Chicago feds as Midway Blitz cases fall apart [View all]
Source: chicago.suntimes.com
Prosecutors have dropped charges against all five people charged in connection with Sept. 27 protests at the immigration holding facility in west suburban Broadview.
By Jon Seidel Nov 20, 2025, 8:26pm CST
These “are not ordinary times at the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse” in Chicago’s Loop.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Fuentes made that point Thursday, as he closed the book on the last of five now-dismissed prosecutions tied to September protests outside a federal immigration holding facility in the western suburbs.
Fuentes used a nine-page opinion not only to dismiss, with prejudice, a misdemeanor charge against Dana Briggs, but to highlight how each of those five cases, all tied to Operation Midway Blitz, “were highly unusual in this district for several reasons.”
“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,” Fuentes wrote.
The five people charged in connection with the Sept. 27 protests were........
Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/11/20/unusual-and-possibly-unprecedented-judge-calls-out-chicago-feds-as-midway-blitz-cases-fall-apart
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