US Democratic congressional candidate indicted for Chicago ICE protest

A Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives has been indicted by the Department of Justice in connection with a protest in front of a federal immigration facility in Illinois.

On Wednesday, in a post on social media, Kat Abughazaleh, 26, announced that she had been charged alongside five other protesters.

“This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights”, Abughazaleh, a progressive influencer and journalist, said in the post. “I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win”.

Currently, Abughazelah is running for an open seat representing Illinois’s ninth congressional district, to the north of Chicago. She is slated to appear on the Democratic primary ballot in March.

Federal prosecutors, however, have accused her and her co-defendants of having “physically hindered and impeded” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at a detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

The indictment said they surrounded a government vehicle, “banged aggressively”, stopped the agent from driving forward, and etched “PIG” on the body of the vehicle. It further alleged that the group broke the vehicle’s side mirrors and a windshield wiper.

Abughazaleh was charged with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer” and “assaulting, resisting or impeding” a federal agent for the September 23 incident.

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice. This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.

Those charged alongside Abughazelah include Michael Rabbitt, a Democratic politician in Chicago’s 45th Ward, and Catherine Sharp, a Democrat running for a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

The charges come as the administration of President Donald Trump surges federal agents to Democrat-run cities as part of a large-scale deportation drive.

Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and US Representative LaMonica McIver, two other Democratic lawmakers who have been charged after engaging in counterprotests. Since then, the charges against him have been dropped.

Trump has also attempted to deploy the National Guard in a number of cities, including Chicago, but the courts have repeatedly blocked his efforts. A decision in the Chicago case is anticipated to be made by the Supreme Court, which could have a wide-ranging impact on how deployments are conducted in the future.

A lower court’s decision to bar the National Guard’s deployment to Portland, Oregon was to be heard on Wednesday by a federal appeals court.

In addition to those cases, the Trump administration has been subject to scrutiny for treating both protesters and immigrants.

The administration has also been criticized for charging disproportionate amounts of money with false accusations against protesters.

Even Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, Abughazelah’s Democratic primary opponent in the 2026 election, was among those who criticized the indictment on Wednesday.

In a statement released by the local news website Evanston Now, Biss claimed that the only people who violently and dangerously behaved at Broadview were ICE.

Biss noted that he had also repeatedly protested the facility’s “kidnapping of our neighbors.”