WASHINGTON — A left-wing influencer-turned-Democratic congressional candidate has been charged with impeding federal immigration enforcement in Chicago.
Kat Abughazaleh, formerly employed by the liberal watchdog Media Matters, was indicted along with four others on charges of having “conspired … to prevent by force, intimidation, and threat” a federal law enforcement officer from carrying out official duties in a manner seeking “to injure him in his person or property.”
Abughazaleh and her alleged co-conspirators “physically hindered and impeded” an unidentified officer who was “forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators” during a protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, Ill., west of downtown Chicago, on Sept. 26.
Kat Abughazaleh, a left-wing influencer and Democratic congressional candidate, has been charged with impeding federal immigration enforcement in Chicago. REUTERS
Candidate for the US House of Representatives Kat Abughazaleh rallies with immigrants rights groups in Chicago. Dave Decker/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
Video footage captured by others at the anti-ICE demonstration showed Abughazaleh and other activists forming a human chain in front of an ICE vehicle while chanting “Down down with deportation, up up with liberation.”
While peaceful protests are generally protected under the First Amendment, courts have ruled that blocking traffic or otherwise jeopardizing public safety is subject to criminal charges.
Abughazaleh holds a megaphone outside of the Broadview ICE processing facility on September 26. REUTERSMichael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, Catherine Sharp, Brian Straw, and Joselyn Walsh were also named in the 11-page indictment, which was filed Oct. 23 in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Abughazaleh, 26, is running to represent Illinois’ Ninth Congressional District, whose seat is currently held by retiring 81-year-old Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky.
Abughazaleh and her co-conspirators “physically hindered and impeded” an unidentified officer during a protest in September. REUTERSIn an X video post Wednesday, Abughazaleh railed against the indictment as “political prosecution” that is seeking to “criminalize protest” and asked for viewers to “help,” though she made no reference to donations for any legal defense fund.
“ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls and tear-gassed hundreds of protesters, simply because we had the gall to say that masked men coming into our communities, abducting our neighbors and terrorizing us cannot be our new normal,” she said.
Abughazaleh is running to replace a vacancy left in Illinois’ Ninth Congressional District. Eileen T Meslar/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire / ShutterstockAbughazaleh claimed that she and the five others named in the indictment were being targeted in a “gross attempt to silence dissent,” “scare us into silence,” and make people afraid of associating “with anyone who disagrees with the government.”
While slamming the Trump White House for its “unhinged and unlawful tactics,” she also brushed off the indictment as proof that “they are scared” and “on the wrong side of history.”
“I have spent my career fighting America’s backslide into fascism,” she said. “I’m not going to stop now, and I hope you won’t either.”
Abughazaleh will face a crowded field in the March primary election to replace Schakowsky, with rivals including Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, state Sens. Laura Fine and Mike Simmons, and state Rep. Hoan Huynh
