Chicago Protestors Reel After Fending Off Federal Charges

The administration governs by propaganda. There’s bluster, threats, and even real violence — all deployed to push a far-right agenda forward while dissuading as many people as possible from opposing it. But what happens when that all-out campaign to intimidate makes contact with reality?

Nowhere has that approach been clearer than in Chicago. Spearheaded by deportation hype man Greg Bovino, federal law enforcement flooded the city in September. Under Bovino’s command, DHS officials used a military helicopter to raid an apartment building while apprehending undocumented immigrants and, in a single day, deployed more tear gas against protestors than Chicago Police had used all year, one investigation found.

That mix of spectacle and force galvanized protests across the city. Many demonstrators were arrested; fewer were charged. And of those charged, many cases crumbled. Federal prosecutors declined to pursue some cases; in others, judges or grand juries declined to let them proceed.

Many of those arrested had earlier experience attending protests, mostly around immigration. All were outraged by what they described to TPM as an operation seemingly as concerned with detaining undocumented immigrants as with heading off public displays of dissent. It’s resulted in prosecutors aggressively bringing charges of interfering with a federal officer. Five Chicago protestors were charged under the statute over one incident on Sept. 27; all of those cases have since collapsed.

Prosecutors dropped their case last week against Dana Briggs, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran initially charged with felony assault of a federal officer over an incident in which his arm hit a federal officer as he was being arrested. Prosecutors later downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor, then moved to abandon the case entirely.

In agreeing to dismiss the case, the magistrate judge recognized how unusual the case — and similar prosecutions — were by noting that prosecutors had “swung and missed multiple times.” He also ordered the release of video from Briggs’ arrest; it shows a CBP officer knocking Briggs over, and Briggs later swatting an officer’s hand as he gave away his phone to another demonstrator.

Briggs told TPM that his cuts and bruises from the incident are mostly healed. He’s a lifelong protestor — he’s been going to anti-ICE rallies for 10 years, and attending human rights and climate protests for 40, he said.

After prosecutors downgraded, Briggs said, they offered him a pretrial diversion program in which he would admit to a set of facts about his case and accept six months probation, after which prosecutors would drop the case. Briggs refused.

“In my mind, I hadn’t done anything other than stand my ground in the middle of the street,” he said. Prosecutors dropped the case last week.

Jocelyne Robledo, 30, is someone out of a far-right nightmare: a self-identified communist who understands and is willing to use the leeway granted by current 2nd Amendment law. Robledo was arrested on the same day as Briggs: Sept. 27. They were detained and later charged alongside their fiancé, Ray Collins. Both were carrying firearms at the time of their arrest.

Prosecutors charged the two with assault of a federal officer, saying that Robledo pushed advancing officers before Collins intervened. An ATF officer’s thumb was left injured in the scuffle, prosecutors said.

While Robledo was detained, ICE officials played up the arrest, calling the couple “armed rioters” in a post two days after their arrests. The post included pictures of the two under arrest. Right-wing influencer Andy Ngo then played a game of call-and-response with the post. He twice posted an image of Robledo’s LinkedIn account, including their current employer.

The prosecution didn’t last long. A little more than a week later, a federal grand jury made the rare move of declining to return an indictment against the couple.

Robledo told TPM that they were lucky. After ICE’s and Ngo’s posts, they said that they started receiving harassing calls and texts, including one referencing their home address. But their employer declined to fire them.

“It kind of ended the best way that it could, especially with the grand jury,” they said.

Ngo told TPM in an email that he sought to “report more facts to the story.”

“To be clear, I highlighted information Ms Robledo publicly posted on her social media because it was relevant — she’s a community health worker who was accused of violent criminal conduct,” he wrote. “This information shouldn’t be hidden from the public to advance her agenda — or yours.”

Like many Americans, Robledo has a cacophony of opinions that transcend any one category. They told TPM that their interest in the 2nd Amendment grew after attending a protest at Standing Rock against the construction of an oil pipeline across a Native American reservation. Law enforcement massively overpowered protestors, they recalled, saying that the experience, along with being trans, prompted them to research gun regulations. They learned the regulations around carrying firearms, and likened it to the same instinct for self-preservation that keeps them COVID-conscious.

“It just means, you know, being prepared in every way,” they told TPM. “Like I mask, I host tests and provide K-95 and respirators for the community. So anyone who needs them can stop by and get some.”

Miramar Martinez was shot five times in October by a CBP officer after she got into an accident with the agent’s car while driving. DHS called her a “domestic terrorist;” even after prosecutors dropped her case last week, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin was undeterred and reiterated that claim to TPM.

Martinez told CNN that she was confused about where all the “fake information” was coming from.

“It’s like traumatic, honestly,” she said, recalling the shooting.

Briggs told TPM that he’s searching for a lawyer to file a civil suit against the Trump administration. “I take my oath to support and defend the Constitution as a 100 percent thing. Not just because I don’t wear the uniform anymore,” he said. “That was an oath I took as a young 20-something, and it doesn’t go away.”