The Justice Department has moved to dismiss its criminal case against a labor union leader who was arrested while protesting the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in California.<\/p>\n
The U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Los Angeles filed a motion Monday to dismiss its case against David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, which has more than 750,000 members including janitors, security officers and other workers. The government will seek to have the case permanently withdrawn within weeks if Huerta continues to comply with the terms of his pretrial release and stays out of trouble, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Huerta said in a statement that he was tackled, pepper-sprayed and detained for exercising his constitutional rights to protest and cast the case against him as part of a broader \u201cweaponization of the judicial system.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was never a real case, only an attempt to punish and silence me for exercising my constitutional rights,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cI will keep exercising my constitutional rights and protest every abuse this administration commits, and I will keep working to build a country that treats immigrant families and all workers with the dignity they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Justice Department had earlier reduced the felony obstruction charge<\/a> to a misdemeanor, and in moving to dismiss it entirely, is now backing away entirely from a prosecution that had been announced with fanfare on social media after Huerta\u2019s arrest more than a year ago. It\u2019s the latest courtroom setback for a department that has struggled, in offices across the country, in its prosecutions of people accused of assaulting or hindering federal officers while protesting President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n The U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Los Angeles said in its own statement that the department doesn\u2019t arrest people for peacefully protesting. The office said that Huerta was charged with interfering with a judicial search warrant and has complied with the terms of his bond for more than a year.<\/p>\n \u201cPursuant to an agreement entered into with our office, if Mr. Huerta continues to comply with his pretrial release terms, we expect the criminal case against him to be fully dismissed by the end of next month,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n Huerta was arrested in June 2025 while protesting outside a business in Los Angeles where federal agents were investigating suspected immigration violations. The incident occurred amid widespread protests over the federal immigration crackdown that drove Trump to take the extraordinary move of deploying<\/a> the National Guard to the nation\u2019s second-largest city.<\/p>\n Authorities said Huerta sat down in front of a vehicular gate and encouraged others to walk in circles to try to prevent law enforcement from going in or out, and he pushed back when an officer told him to leave and put his hands on Huerta to move him out of the way of a vehicle.<\/p>\n Union leaders and immigrant advocates rallied in cities across the country demanding Huerta\u2019s release and he became the face of the pushback against the Republican president\u2019s effort to drive up immigration arrests<\/a>. Top Democrats also fired back. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and California\u2019s two Democratic senators wrote a letter to federal officials demanding answers regarding Huerta\u2019s arrest. California Sen. Adam Schiff attended Huerta\u2019s bond hearing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is deeply troubling that a U.S. citizen, union leader, and upstanding member of the Los Angeles community continues to be detained by the federal government for exercising his rights to observe immigration enforcement,\u201d the senators wrote.<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors initially charged Huerta with felony obstruction. Bill Essayli, the top U.S. prosecutor in Los Angeles, said it didn\u2019t matter who was protesting \u201cif you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted.\u201d<\/p>\n In October, prosecutors reduced the charge<\/a> against Huerta to a misdemeanor. The same month, Essayli was disqualified<\/a> from several cases by a judge who concluded the Trump appointee stayed on as acting U.S. attorney longer than allowed by law. Essayli, who was previously a California state legislator, is now technically the first assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Huerta\u2019s lawyers, Abbe Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, said in a statement that the case against their client had no legal basis.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration\u2019s improper immigration actions. Today\u2019s filing is proof that David and other critics will not be silenced,\u201d the lawyers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Justice Department has moved to dismiss its criminal case against a labor union leader who was arrested…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-414182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}