Chicago ICE Protesters Cite ‘Cover-Up’ in Bid for Attorney Fees

Anti-ICE protesters whose prosecution recently fell apart said Tuesday the government should pay their legal bills in light of “serial and severe” prosecutorial misconduct. The same day, US Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office took the rare step of releasing grand jury materials in a special report that confirmed he’d briefly addressed the grand jury last fall after “disturbances and potential tension” had disrupted earlier proceedings.

Boutros is under increasing fire in the fallout of the protester case. Multiple public officials have called for his resignation, including on Tuesday, when Illinois US Sens. Dick Durbin (D) and Tammy Duckworth (D) said his tenure has been “riddled with chaos, deep internal dysfunction, and alleged misconduct.”

The case against the protesters was dropped last month on the cusp of trial after revelations of apparent prosecutorial misconduct. The protesters were accused of blocking a federal agent from driving toward an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Chicago suburbs during “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s aggressive Chicago-area deportation push.

To recoup attorney fees from the government, defendants who prevail in federal criminal cases must show the prosecution was “vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith.”

Attorneys for the protesters in their filing Tuesday said further discovery is warranted to learn the depth of the misconduct, including information about the what they called the “willful and persistent cover-up of that conduct by the government over the past six months.”

“It was only the outing of that severe and prejudicial misconduct which caused the U.S. Attorney immediately to dismiss all charges against the four Defendants — because the fact of the prosecutors’ misconduct had been well-known to all the AUSAs involved in the case, and to the U.S. Attorney for months,” they wrote.

Special Report

Earlier Tuesday, Boutros released the special report on the grand jury proceedings in the case. He didn’t discuss any specific cases or evidence and told the grand jury Oct. 23 their job was to “call balls and strikes,” the report says.

Boutros asked grand jurors to speak up if they were “struggling with a certain type of cases, such as the immigration cases or other cases where they do not believe that they can set aside their personal, their personal emotions, that they cannot listen and deliberate honestly and objectively.”

“I would ask that you raise your hand and identify yourself, because we have a different procedure for that,” he said. Boutros noted in the moment that nobody raised their hands, according to the report. The grand jury returned an indictment in the protester case that same day, records show. Grand jurors had previously declined to indict in the matter.

Boutros spoke to three grand juries after the unidentified “grand jury disturbances,” according to the report. Grand jurors were also read a letter from Chief Judge Virginia Kendall of the Northern District of Illinois, the report says, noting that the US Attorney’s Office hasn’t seen that letter.

Grand jurors who are “unwilling to deliberate individually or as a collective body, or unwilling to attend grand jury sessions at all, or to receive evidence impartially without fear or favor, setting aside personally biases, views, and passions, are a threat to the rule of law and could mean that a district is operating in such a way that federal criminal law cannot be enforced,” the report says.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, Christopher Parente, an attorney for protester Brian Straw, noted that Boutros made his appearance a week after a prosecutor “dismissed grand jurors who voiced dissent” in the matter. He also noted that Boutros addressed grand jurors the same day they delivered the indictment.

Boutros’ report came in response to remarks at a court hearing after the protester case’s dismissal, at which the defense said they had reason to believe Boutros had contact with the grand jury.

Boutros received court authorization to distribute details about normally secret grand jury proceedings, his office said.

Grand jurors were considering the case as “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s Chicago-area deportation campaign, surged through the city and suburbs.

In a prior statement to Bloomberg Law, Boutros’ office said grand jury practices were “substantially strained” during Midway Blitz, and in cases where grand jurors didn’t return indictments there were “clear instances of straight jury nullification” in which grand jurors didn’t indict despite clear probable cause.

Boutros also announced changes to the office’s grand jury procedures last week.

The case is United States v. Rabbitt, N.D. Ill., No. 1:25-cr-00693, motion filed 6/2/26 .