Prosecutors Move to Dismiss the Last Charges Against Four Broadview ICE-Facility Protest Defendants; Judge Grants Dismissal With Prejudice (U.S. v. Rabbitt)

On 5/21/2026 (hearing and minute-entry date), Judge April M. Perry of the Northern District of Illinois granted the government’s oral motion to dismiss, with prejudice, the superseding information in United States v. Rabbitt, No. 1:25-cr-00693. That information was the last live charging document in the prosecution of the people indicted over the protest at the Broadview ICE facility. The same minute entry records the government agreeing to take down its press release saying the defendants had been charged, or add a banner saying the charges were dismissed, and vacates the trial date and all related deadlines.

Premise correction. The task framing (all six charges dropped on the 21st) compresses a multi-step sequence on the docket. What the 5/21/2026 dismissal ended was four misdemeanor counts against four people. The felony conspiracy count, and defendants Sharp and Walsh, had already been dismissed earlier.

Sequence on the docket (each date is a court filing, order or minute-entry date):

• October 23, 2025 (indictment return date): the lead count charged six defendants with conspiring under 18 U.S.C. § 372; Counts Two through Seven each charged one defendant with a misdemeanor under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). See 2025-10-29–kat-abughazaleh-indicted-ice-protest for the unsealing and the original coverage.
• March 13, 2026 (order date): on the government’s motion filed the day before, Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh were dismissed with prejudice. The motion gave no reason beyond “in the interests of justice.”
• April 29, 2026 (filing date): the government filed a superseding information charging the remaining four defendants (Rabbitt, Abughazaleh, Martin, Straw) with misdemeanor violations of § 111(a)(1) only, leaving the original indictment pending on paper.
• May 8, 2026 (clerk’s entry date of the minute order): after the four defendants moved to dismiss the conspiracy count, the government filed its own written motion to dismiss it with prejudice, stating it did so to “alleviate defendants’ stated concerns.” At the hearing on that motion Count One was dismissed with prejudice. The docket text dates the hearing the day before the entry date; the originally issued notification reads as though it were held on the entry date.
• Between that hearing and the end, the original indictment itself was dismissed at the pretrial conference (Count One with prejudice, the remaining counts without prejudice) and the case proceeded to trial on the superseding information.
• 5/21/2026 (minute-entry date): the superseding information was dismissed with prejudice on the government’s oral motion, the same day the court granted the defendants’ motion for disclosure of the prosecutors’ colloquies with the grand jury.

What the record says about why. The reasons given in court are in the hearing transcript, not in the minute entry. In the transcript of that hearing, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros tells the court that he moved to dismiss after learning of conduct in the grand jury; that is his statement in court, not a finding. The grand jury transcripts were later released on the public docket in June 2026.

Aftermath, still open. Dismissal did not end the docket. Defendants filed Hyde Amendment fee motions and motions about discovery and sanctions after the dismissal, and in October 2026 the court, noting the government’s agreement that it would seek evidence on potential sanctions or criminal contempt, asked the government to produce specified documents by 10/30/2026. No ruling on sanctions or fees appeared on the RECAP copy of the docket read for this entry (last entry then on file: an October 2026 minute order).

Function, not intent. Whatever the motive, the charging instruments functioned as follows: a felony conspiracy count was filed against six people over a protest, and it was withdrawn with prejudice at the point the defense was seeking the grand jury instructions behind it; the remaining misdemeanors survived until the court ordered the grand jury colloquies disclosed. The people charged include a congressional candidate and local officeholders; this entry records only their charging and dismissal history from the docket.

Provenance and limits. Built from the CourtListener RECAP copy of the docket (a mirror of PACER, not the register) and the filings on its free storage host: the government’s motions to dismiss, the March order, the May minute entries and the 5/21/2026 hearing transcript. No PACER documents were purchased. The superseding information is a scanned image and was not text-extracted; its content is taken from the government’s own description in its motion to dismiss Count One.