‘Broadview 6’ defense accuses Chicago’s top federal prosecutor of having
contact with grand jury
[May 27, 2026]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — A defense attorney for one of the “Broadview Six” immigration
protesters alleged in court Tuesday that he had “reason to believe” that
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros had personal contact with members of the
grand jury who indicted the group in October.
Hours later, Boutros’ office said Chicago’s top federal prosecutor has
not presented evidence to a grand jury “on any particular case” since
becoming U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in April
2025. However, the response from his spokesperson did not deny he’s been
present in front of grand juries.
“Any appearance he has made in the grand juries has been in his capacity
as the Chief Legal Advisor to the federal grand juries of this district,
including to welcome them when they were impaneled or to advise
generally on the role, function, and importance of the grand jury in our
constitutional system of government and laws,” the statement read.
The allegation of Boutros’ contact with the grand jury came from Chris
Parente, a lawyer for Oak Park village trustee Brian Straw, one of the
defendants in the case. Straw, along with three others from the original
group of six, were set to face a rare federal misdemeanor trial
beginning Tuesday. But instead, defendants and attorneys gathered in
U.S. District Judge April Perry’s courtroom not for jury selection, but
for the first in a series of hearings regarding possible sanctions for
prosecutors involved in the case.
The judge brought parties back to her chambers to discuss the matter,
according to reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.
But no further details were made available after the closed-doors
portion of the hearing.
Boutros himself made a rare appearance in court last week to drop all
remaining charges against the defendants — a dramatic final twist to the
highest-profile criminal case resulting from the Trump administration’s
“Operation Midway Blitz” mass deportation campaign last fall in Chicago.
The U.S. attorney took responsibility for the actions of the former lead
prosecutor on the case, whose behavior in front of the grand jury last
fall came to light after Perry reviewed transcripts of the grand jury
proceedings.
Perry all but accused Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg of
prosecutorial misconduct, saying the transcripts revealed inappropriate
“vouching” in which Mecklenburg put “her personal credibility and
trustworthiness on the line in support of the charges,” the judge said.
The prosecutor also apparently asked grand jurors who did not support
the government’s case to not come back, and allegedly had improper
contact with those impaneled outside the grand jury room.
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The Dirksen Federal Courthouse is pictured in Chicago. (Capitol News
Illinois file photo by Andrew Adams)
Mecklenburg left the case in February when she took an assignment to
represent the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., as counsel for
the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Illinois’ senior U.S. Sen. Dick
Durbin serves as the ranking Democrat. Durbin’s office on Friday
confirmed Mecklenburg had been terminated from her new job after her
alleged prosecutorial misconduct was made public.
The U.S. attorney claimed that he knew about — and took steps to correct
— the grand juror dismissals in the fall, but he said he was only
informed of the vouching and improper communications with grand jurors
late last month. He told Perry that the revelation prompted his late
April decision to drop the felony conspiracy charge against the four
remaining defendants.
Boutros also said he’d “not seen conduct like that, and it upset me,”
but defended the remaining two prosecutors against defense attorneys’
accusations that the U.S. attorney’s office had previously provided a
strategically redacted version of grand jury transcripts to the judge in
order to hide the prosecutorial misconduct.
Perry called the redactions “the most problematic” of what she found in
reading the full transcripts, but Boutros said it was his “very sincere
belief” that none of the prosecutors “acted intentionally in misleading
you.”
Late Friday afternoon before the holiday weekend, a court filing
indicated the case would be taken over by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane
MacArthur, a respected career prosecutor best known in recent years for
her roles in blockbuster public corruption cases against ex-Illinois
House Speaker Michael Madigan and the “ComEd Four” accused of bribing
him, in addition to former Chicago Ald. Ed Burke.
MacArthur on Tuesday said the government wouldn’t oppose the public
release of the transcripts with proper redactions to protect grand
jurors’ identifying information. Perry gave lawyers until June 5 to
agree on redactions.
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