The lead prosecutor in the politically charged ‘Broadview Six’ case accusing a group of Democrats and other protesters of conspiring to impede immigration agents at the Broadview ICE facility is leaving the office for a temporary detail in Washington D.C.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago, has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Dick Durbin, a committee spokeswoman confirmed Monday. Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, which vets presidential nominees for the federal judiciary and U.S. attorney posts, is retiring in January 2027.
Mecklenburg is not expected to return to Chicago until next year and will miss the Broadview Six trial, which is currently slated to begin May 26. She officially withdrew from the case without comment last week. She also has stepped down from her role in a sweeping fraud case against former executives at Loretto Hospital.
“Ms. Mecklenburg is an experienced prosecutor who applied for and received a temporary detail within a different branch of the federal government,” Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago, said in a written statement Monday. “She is in the process of withdrawing from her active cases. We wish her the best and look forward to her returning to our Office after completing her detail.”
William Hogan, the longest-serving prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office, has taken Mecklenburg’s spot in the case and will prosecute it with Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba.
Though unrelated, Mecklenburg’s departure also marks the second time in two months that the lead prosecutor in a controversial criminal case stemming from Operation Midway Blitz has left the office shortly before trial.
In January, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bradley Tucker abruptly departed just weeks before he’d been scheduled to lead the high-profile trial of Juan Espinoza Martinez, a Chicago man accused of soliciting the murder of Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.
No reason for Tucker’s departure was given at the time, though sources said he left without having another job lined up, which was unusual. Espinoza Martinez’s trial, led by a team of different prosecutors, ended Jan. 22 with an acquittal on all counts.
Mecklenburg’s new detail with the Judiciary Committee is her second stint in Washington in recent years, having previously served as White Collar Crime Coordinator with the Department of Justice.
Mecklenburg, meanwhile, was involved in the Broadview Six prosecution from the beginning and brought the case to a grand jury, which handed up an indictment on Oct. 23 charged the defendants with a felony conspiracy count as well as several other misdemeanor counts of forcibly impeding a federal officer.
She made no mention of her possible departure at the most recent hearing in the case earlier this month, when U.S. District Judge April Perry set the trial date and talked with both sides about how to conduct jury selection with such high-profile and controversial issues involved.
Meckenburg had previously fought for a protective order that would limit how much of the evidence turned over in discovery could be made public ahead of the trial, telling Perry, “I would like to try the case in the courtroom, and not in the media.”
The Broadview Six indictment is the last remaining high-profile criminal case stemming from last fall’s Operation Midway Blitz, and one that has drawn national attention.
Among those charged are four Democrats: Abughazaleh, 26, former Cook County Board candidate Catherine “Cat” Sharp, 29; 45th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Rabbit, 62; and Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, 38.
Catherine “Cat” Sharp leaves Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in the Loop on Jan. 28, 2026, after a hearing for charges of conspiracy during a protest outside the Broadview ICE facility in September. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Also charged were Andre Martin, 27, originally of Providence, Rhode Island, who is Abughazaleh’s deputy campaign manager, and Joselyn Walsh, 31, a garden store worker and singer who has no personal connection to the other defendants.
All six have pleaded not guilty to an indictment alleging they conspired to block a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent from entering ICE’s processing facility in west suburban Broadview on Sept. 26, during one of a string of protests that occurred outside the two-story building as the Trump administration ramped up its aggressive deportation efforts.
The charges have been met by accusations that the Department of Justice under Republican President Donald Trump was prosecuting free speech and trying to punish political opponents.
Abughazaleh’s attorney, Josh Herman, has blasted the indictment as a politically motivated farce that attempts to turn “a protest into a criminal conspiracy.”
In a motion filed Monday, the defendants said body-worn camera footage from Broadview police officers on the scene that day shows Abughazaleh move away from the agents’ vehicle she was allegedly impeding, grab a megaphone and tell the crowd “that’s private property back there — come back.”
The footage also showed other defendants, including Walsh, who was carrying her guitar, “independently moved away from the SUV” within seconds of finding themselves in its path, the defense motion says.
Defense attorneys want prosecutors to file a bill of particulars that will more fully lay out what evidence they intend to use to try to prove the existence of a conspiracy.
“(Defendants) are entitled to know whether the government will attempt to use their constitutionally protected acts of dissent against the administration’s immigration enforcement actions as criminal acts of conspiracy,” the filing stated.
According to the 11-page indictment, the group surrounded an ICE vehicle outside the Broadview facility during a Sept. 26 protest and “banged aggressively” on the vehicle’s side and back windows, hood and doors before they “crowded together in the front and side of the Government Vehicle and pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement.”
Prosecutors allege the protesters scratched the vehicle’s body, broke a side mirror and a rear windshield wiper, and etched the word “PIG” into the paint.
The indictment includes the conspiracy count, which carries a maximum sentence of six years in federal prison, as well as several other counts of forcibly impeding a federal officer, each punishable by up to one year in federal prison.
Hogan’s injection into the case is sure to catch attention in Chicago legal circles, where the 45-year veteran is well known as a fierce advocate for the U.S. attorney’s office and a sometimes-salty courtroom adversary.
In the 1990s, Hogan led a series of high-profile prosecutions targeting the notorious El Rukn street gang, a case widely hailed as a triumph, but also fraught with controversy and scandal. He was fired amid the fallout, but fought to clear his name and was reinstated two years later after an administrative judge found no convincing evidence of wrongdoing on his part.
More recently Hogan was critical of a magistrate judge’s written opinion blasting the integrity of the U.S. attorney’s office in bringing criminal cases against Midway Blitz protestors, calling it “grandstanding.”
Hogan told the Tribune the U.S. attorney’s office had done its job correctly, making quick decisions on whether to file charges when federal agents claimed to have been assaulted and dropping cases when further investigation revealed they could not be proven in court.
Hogan personally handled the case against Cole Sheridan, an Oak Park man accused of shoving Bovino in the back during a protest at the Broadview ICE facility on Oct. 3. He said he filed a motion to drop the case after reviewing new video from a bystander that showed he’d been falsely accused.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
