\u201cThis is a political prosecution and a gross attempt to silence dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment. This case is a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish anyone who speaks out against them,\u201d Abughazaleh said Wednesday in a video posted to BlueSky.<\/p>\n
Protesters have been gathering outside the immigration center to oppose enforcement operations in the Chicago area that have led to more than 1,800 arrests<\/a> and complaints of excessive force<\/p>\n Greg Bovino, who is leading Border Patrol efforts in Chicago, was ordered this week by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis to brief her every evening<\/a> about the operations. It is an unprecedented bid to impose real-time oversight on the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in the city after weeks of tense encounters and increasingly aggressive tactics<\/a> by agents.<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors accuse Abughazaleh and others of surrounding a vehicle driven by a federal agent on Sept. 26 and attempting to stop it from entering the facility.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Stay up to date with the latest news from AP.\n <\/p>\n Among the others named in the indictment are a candidate for the Cook County Board, a Democratic ward committeeman and a trustee in suburban Oak Park.<\/p>\n The group banged on the car, pushed against it, broke a mirror and scratched the text \u201cPIG\u201d on the vehicle, the indictment said.<\/p>\n Abughazaleh at one point put her hands on the vehicle\u2019s hood and braced her body against it while staying in its way, the indictment says. The agent was \u201cforced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators,\u201d it says. <\/p>\n Abughazaleh is running in a crowded Democratic primary to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schawkosky. <\/a><\/p>\n Protesting the immigration crackdown around Chicago has emerged as a top issue on campaigns<\/a> in Illinois\u2019 March primary. Elected officials and candidates in the Democratic stronghold have often showed up for demonstrations outside the Broadview federal facility<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I and others have exercised our First Amendment rights, 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,\u201d Abughazaleh says in the video.<\/p>\n \u201cAs scary as all of this is, I have spent my career fighting America\u2019s backslide into fascism,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna stop now, and I hope you won\u2019t either.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 A Democratic congressional candidate in Illinois has been indicted along with five others accused of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1927,157,12,793,139325,5630,5629,790,3073,140033,3,111,3775,120119,795,21,792,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-259288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-chicago","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-greg-bovino","tag-il-state-wire","tag-illinois","tag-immigration","tag-indictments","tag-jan-schawkosky","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-protests-and-demonstrations","tag-sara-ellis","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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