The Trump administration is prosecuting Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh and five others for allegedly assaulting an immigration agent during protests over deportation raids.
A grand jury in Illinois indicted Abughazaleh, a content creator running to succeed Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, on Wednesday.
The indictment alleges that Abughazaleh and five other protesters “conspired with one another and others, known and unknown, to prevent by force, intimidation, and threat … a United States law enforcement officer, from discharging the duties of his office.”
The indictment also alleges that they planned “to injure” the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and to “injure his property so as to interrupt, hinder, and impede him” from conducting his duties.
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The incident in question happened on Sept. 26, when Abughazaleh joined protests against ICE’s ramped up deportation raids in the Chicago area. The indictment states that the six individuals stopped an ICE agent who was driving a government vehicle from entering an ICE facility located in Broadview, Illinois.
Abughazaleh and the five other people “banged aggressively” on the vehicle’s windows, “pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement,” and etched the word “PIG” on the side of the vehicle, per the indictment.
She was charged with one count of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer and one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer, which have maximum prison sentences of six and eight years, respectively.
The Trump administration has cracked down on protests, deploying the National Guard and federal agents to different Democratic-controlled cities. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has made it clear the administration is focused on arresting people who protest outside of ICE facilities, claiming they are interfering with immigration agents’ actions.
This isn’t the first charge of a political figure over actions at ICE facilities: Earlier this year, the Justice Department charged Rep. LaMonica McIver for allegedly impeding ICE activity during a visit to a detention facility; she pleaded not guilty.
DHS and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Abughazaleh indictment.
In a statement, Abughazaleh said the indictment “is a political prosecution and a gross attempt at silencing dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment.”
“This case is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up,” Abughazaleh continued. “As I and others exercised our First Amendment rights, ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters, myself included. Simply because we had the gall to say masked men abducting our neighbors and terrorizing our community cannot be the new normal.”
Videos of Abughazaleh protesting outside ICE facilities have gone viral in the last couple of weeks. One posted on Sept. 19 shows the congressional candidate being thrown to the ground by federal agents.
On Sept. 26, the day of the incident cited in the indictment, Abughazaleh posted a video showing her and other protesters attempting to stop or slow down an ICE vehicle. At the time, she posted that “no protester has taken any violent action and yet ICE has deployed at least a dozen canisters of tear gas, detonated a flash bang in a man’s face, and now a sniper is shooting us with pepper balls.”
This article has been updated with further details on the counts.
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