As in cases in other Blue Cities…..
The people sitting on Federal Grand Juries defy Justice Dept. efforts to charge those protesting ICE actions as criminals…
Those trying to carry out Trump’s political actions ARE on their own ….
Trump’s Justice Dept meets ‘We the People’ and falls short….
A federal grand jury has elected not to indict two individuals who were charged with assaulting federal law enforcement officers during a protest outside a suburban Chicago immigration facility last month.
The grand jury’s rejection of felony charges, disclosed in federal court in Chicago on Wednesday, represented a new setback in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration in cities around the country. It was the latest instance in which federal prosecutors failed to convince a panel of citizens that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel Fuentes dismissed the case against the two protesters, Ray Collins and Jocelyne Robledo, on Wednesday morning after prosecutors said in a hearing that they had not secured an indictment.
Richard S. Kling, a lawyer who represented Mr. Collins, called the failure to secure an indictment “highly unusual.”
Grand jurors consider evidence presented by prosecutors and the witnesses they choose to present — not from the defense or the people accused — during secret proceedings. Unlike in a criminal trial, where juries must reach a unanimous verdict, only a simple majority of the grand jury is required to issue an indictment.
Mr. Kling cited the legal adage maintaining that the threshold for securing an indictment is so low that a grand jury would readily indict a ham sandwich. “Obviously, they didn’t have enough for a ham sandwich here,” he said.
Other grand juries have also bucked federal prosecutors seeking to crack down on those who have stood in the way of the government’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.
In August, a federal grand jury in Washington declined to indict a man who was facing felony assault charges for lobbing a sandwich that struck a federal agent. Days earlier, federal prosecutors in Washington downgraded charges against a woman accused of assaulting an F.B.I. agent during a protest after failing to persuadethree grand juries to indict her on felony charges….
Update….
Judge orders halt to DHS agents’ targeting of journalists in Chicago
The temporary restraining order comes amid clashes between protesters and federal agents in the Chicago area, where journalists have repeatedly been hit with pepper balls and tear gas.