Michael Rabbitt is a Chicago Democratic committeeperson who became known as one of the Broadview Six, a group of protesters federally indicted over a September 2025 demonstration outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois. He faced a felony conspiracy charge and a misdemeanor count carrying up to seven years in prison. All charges against him were permanently dismissed on May 21, 2026, after U.S. District Judge April Perry found extensive prosecutorial misconduct in the grand jury proceedings.
What Happened Outside the Broadview ICE Facility
On September 26, 2025, Rabbitt joined dozens of demonstrators outside an ICE processing facility in Broadview during the early weeks of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” a mass deportation campaign focused on Chicago. The protesters conducted what they called a “Jericho Walk,” marching, chanting, and singing in a circle near the facility.
During the march, an ICE agent drove a vehicle through the crowd. Rabbitt later said he approached the moving SUV, put his hand on the passenger side, and yelled “stop” twice because he “didn’t want to be a bystander” to the vehicle pushing into the crowd. The agent continued through the group at roughly two miles per hour, and no one was physically injured in that encounter. Federal agents used tear gas, pepper spray, and less-lethal baton rounds against demonstrators across the broader morning protest, and at least two people were arrested at the scene.
The Indictment and the Charges
On October 23, 2025, a federal grand jury in Chicago indicted six people over the protest. The group, quickly dubbed the Broadview Six, included Rabbitt alongside former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, campaign worker Andre Martin, former Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp, and musician Joselyn Walsh. Each was charged with felony conspiracy to impede a federal agent and an individual misdemeanor count of impeding or assaulting a federal officer. Combined, the charges carried a maximum of seven years in prison.
Prosecutors alleged the group had surrounded a government vehicle, “banged aggressively” on its windows and hood, and damaged a mirror and windshield wiper to prevent an ICE agent from performing official duties. All six defendants surrendered on November 12, 2025, pleaded not guilty, and were released on $4,500 unsecured appearance bonds.
Rabbitt learned of his indictment while traveling in Lisbon, Portugal, for his 30th wedding anniversary, and later said he feared being detained on his return to the United States. Five of the six defendants were elected officials, political candidates, or active in political campaigns, and defense attorneys called the prosecution politically motivated from the start.
Why the Case Collapsed
The prosecution unraveled after Judge Perry reviewed unredacted transcripts of the grand jury proceedings. She described what she found as unlike anything she had seen in her career.
The case had actually gone before the same grand jury panel across three separate sessions in October 2025. On October 9, the panel returned a “no bill,” declining to indict. When prosecutors brought the case back on October 16, lead prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg told jurors she had failed to properly explain the law the first time. During that session, one grand juror called the case a “crock of s–t.” Mecklenburg dismissed that juror and another who expressed reluctance to vote, and she admitted she had spoken to grand jurors privately outside the jury room, acknowledging she had done “something today that I’m not supposed to do.” Before the third session on October 23, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros himself addressed the grand jury and asked jurors to raise their hands if they were “struggling” with immigration cases. The panel returned an indictment that day.
Judge Perry identified several categories of misconduct in the transcripts:
- Improper vouching, with Mecklenburg telling grand jurors they could trust her judgment and that she would “never ask you to charge somebody if I didn’t think there was probable cause.”
- Dismissing dissenting jurors who disagreed with the government’s case and telling them not to return for subsequent sessions.
- Substantive ex parte communications with grand jurors outside the jury room.
- Concealment, in which prosecutors gave the judge strategically redacted transcripts and withheld pages, which Perry called “problematic” and an attempt to obscure what had happened.
Dismissal With Prejudice
The case fell apart in stages. On March 12, 2026, charges were dropped against Sharp and Walsh. In late April, prosecutors dropped the felony conspiracy counts against the remaining four defendants, leaving only misdemeanor charges for a trial set for May 26. After reviewing the full unredacted grand jury transcripts, Judge Perry canceled the trial.
On May 21, 2026, Boutros appeared in Perry’s courtroom and moved to dismiss all remaining charges with prejudice, meaning they can never be refiled. He apologized and took responsibility for his office’s conduct. Perry rebuked him from the bench, saying he had “significantly undercut” his own apology by continuing to insist the underlying charges were warranted and by “vilifying” the defendants as he dropped the case. “Your sole goal is to do justice,” she told him. “That trust has been broken.”
The dismissal ended a seven-month legal ordeal. Defense attorneys described the prosecutors’ conduct as “sickening,” “warped,” and “gross.”
What It Cost Rabbitt
Rabbitt has spoken publicly about the toll of the prosecution. He used an emergency savings fund and money from his retirement account to cover his legal costs, and he described the experience as causing “multi-generational trauma,” referencing his father’s own past legal difficulties. After the dismissal, he called for Boutros to resign and urged congressional hearings on accountability.
On June 2, 2026, defense attorneys filed claims under the Hyde Amendment, a federal provision allowing defendants to recover legal fees when a prosecution is found to have been conducted in bad faith. Abughazaleh said publicly that the defendants collectively owed “hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.” The Department of Justice indicated it would not contest the fee claims, though defense attorneys suggested the government’s willingness to pay was an attempt to avoid producing internal communications in discovery.
On June 17, 2026, defense attorneys filed a 27-page motion asking Judge Perry to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Boutros and other Justice Department officials for potential criminal contempt, arguing that the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office could not “credibly investigate themselves.” As of late June 2026, Perry had not yet ruled on that motion.
Who Michael Rabbitt Is
Rabbitt was 62 at the time of his indictment and has lived in Chicago’s Edgebrook neighborhood for roughly 25 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Bradley University and an MBA from DePaul University, and he works as head of business transformation at Argonne National Laboratory.
In March 2024, he was elected 45th Ward Democratic committeeperson, defeating Joe Cook with just under 54 percent of the vote. He had previously run for the Illinois House of Representatives in the 15th District’s June 2022 Democratic primary, losing narrowly to incumbent Michael Kelly with roughly 48 percent of the vote. By his own description, he has been involved in Northwest Side community organizing for about 16 years, focused on affordable housing, climate justice, and racial justice. He co-founded Neighbors for Affordable Housing, founded a Racial and Social Justice Ministry at his parish of St. Mary of the Woods, and has held roles with the Interfaith Coalition Against Racism, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and the Northwest Side Coalition Against Racism and Hate.
Fallout Beyond the Six
The consequences reached well past Rabbitt and his co-defendants. Mecklenburg, who had left the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office in February 2026 for a position as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee on detail from the Department of Justice, was fired from that role after the misconduct became public. A spokesperson for Senator Dick Durbin said her detail was terminated because of “the gravity of the charges in this case.” Three other prosecutors involved in the case, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba, were replaced.
By late June 2026, Boutros had dropped three separate cases Mecklenburg had led, citing “serious irregularities” in grand jury proceedings, and pledged to review her cases and grand jury interactions dating back to 2007. On June 8, 2026, 111 former federal prosecutors from the Northern District of Illinois published an open letter accusing Boutros of a “failure of leadership” and warning that “once-forbidden political considerations are infecting prosecutorial decisions.” Senators Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, along with several House members, formally called for his resignation. The letter noted that of 33 defendants charged under Operation Midway Blitz, 24 had been cleared and five had reached deals for dismissal, with only two guilty pleas.