The Trump administration is on a losing streak against some of its loudest critics, as federal cases targeting opponents of aggressive immigration enforcement fall apart in courts nationwide.

In the span of a week, prosecutors failed to bring convictions in two high-profile cases in Los Angeles federal court. In the first, a jury acquitted Bobby Nuñez, a tow-truck driver who hooked an ICE vehicle and was charged with stealing government property. In the second, a judge dismissed the case against Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikToker who was facing assault and property damage charges after a confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, due to concerns that officials had violated his civil rights. (In the October 21 confrontation, an ICE agent shot him.)

“These arrests are a form of retaliation by the government,” said Matthew Borden, an attorney representing protesters, journalists, and legal observers in a lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stemming from protests in Southern California over the past year. “When you have a real judge and a real jury looking at the evidence, it just falls apart.”

“When you have a real judge and a real jury looking at the evidence, it just falls apart.”

The two cases come on the heels of a spate of failed federal charges prosecutors filed against protesters in Chicago, including one in which Border Patrol agents shot Miramar Martinez during a roadside confrontation in October and later charged her with assault. In November, a protester in Washington D.C. was acquitted after a two-day trial stemming from on assault charges he faced for throwing a sandwich at a border patrol agent.

“They’re moving at a pace that they’re not used to, and they’re not doing the legwork up front,” said Christopher Parente, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago representing Martinez, whose case was dismissed last month.

Federal court is typically not a friendly place for defendants. U.S. Attorneys are known for being choosy about the cases they bring, so cases that make it to a grand jury for indictment are often much more thoroughly vetted than those that might be brought before a state court. And faced with stiff penalties if convicted at trial, the vast majority of defendants opt for a plea deal.

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In the year leading up to September 30, according to numbers published by the federal judiciary September 30, 91 percent of cases— 75,151 out of 82,042 in total — ended with a guilty plea, and less than two percent ended in a guilty verdict at trial. In the same period, just over six percent of cases ended without a conviction, including 5,336 dismissals and 192 acquittals at trial.

“Usually, federal cases are built after long investigations, and then you indict,” Parente told The Intercept. “And this is kind of the opposite: It’s just very quick decisions that are being made on the word of your Border Patrol agents. And if they’re not credible — which in this case they weren’t — that’s going to cause huge problems.”

“Usually, federal cases are built after long investigations, and then you indict. And this is kind of the opposite.”

The Trump administration appears to have upended that practice as it struggles to control the narrative surrounding its unpopular immigration crackdown. In higher-profile confrontations between protesters and federal agents amid aggressive immigration enforcement actions in blue cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C., federal officials have called defendants like Parias and Martinez “domestic terrorists” while seeking lesser charges.

Time and again, their cases have fallen apart.

In Chicago, on November 3, a judge dismissed charges against Cole Sheridan, a protester accused of attacking Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino after new video evidence undercut the government’s claims.

Days later, prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss their case against Martinez and her co-defendant, Anthony Ruiz, following the emergence of damning text messages by the agent who shot Martinez and other facts that might have damaged the state’s case, Parente said.

That same day, in Washington D.C., a jury acquitted Sean Dunn, the man accused of throwing a sandwich at a Border Patrol agent, following a farcical two-day trial in which the agent testified about feeling the impact through his tactical vest and smelling “the onions and mustard” on his clothes.

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The latest cases of Nuñez and Parias in Los Angeles add to the pattern.

In a scathing 28-page decision filed Saturday, Judge Fernando Manzano Olguin blasted the government for making it virtually impossible for his lawyers to meet with him at Adelanto, the privately run ICE facility where Parias was held after being released on bail from pre-trial custody.

“Here, defendant’s detention in Adelanto has effectively denied him access to his counsel for nearly the entire month preceding trial,” Olguin wrote, referring to the detention center at which Parias was held on an ICE detainer. “Mr. Parias is not ‘free’ to communicate with his attorneys by telephone.”

Olguin further ripped prosecutors for their belated production of evidence before affirming the defense team’s request for the charges to be thrown out with prejudice, thus barring the prosecution from refiling the charges.

Overall numbers for federal arrests of anti-ICE protesters were not immediately available, but the number of high-profile dismissals and acquittals of protesters in recent weeks stands in stark contrast to the usual win rate. In an email to The Intercept, a DOJ spokesperson laid the blame at the foot of “activist liberal judges,” and said agents and prosecutors are making quick decisions in the heat of the moment.

“The Department of Justice will continue to seek the most serious available charges against any individual who puts federal agents in harm’s way,” the spokeswoman wrote.

If the brass at the Department of Justice are feeling the heat, they won’t admit it. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles took a similar tack in response to questions regarding the dismissal of the charges against Parias.

“We strongly disagree with the court’s version of the facts as well as its legal conclusions. We are reviewing the court’s decision and we will determine our options for an appeal,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The acquittal of Nuñez, meanwhile, drew the ire of Stephen Miller, the anti-immigration zealot who is seen as the driving force behind the Trump Administration’s hardline policies.

“Another example of jury nullification in a blue city,” Miller wrote on X, referring to the practice of jurors intentionally tanking a criminal case regardless of the evidence. “The justice system depends on a jury of peers with a shared system of interests and values. Mass migration tribalizes the entire system.”

A spokesperson for the L.A. federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on allegations of jury nullification in the tow-truck case, referring The Intercept to a post on X in which Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California appeared to suggest that the true goal of the charges against Nuñez was to keep him off the street amid ongoing immigration enforcement.

“The jury may have acquitted him, but guess what Bobby wasn’t doing the last few months while awaiting trial: obstructing our ICE agents,” Essayli wrote on December 22. “This defendant’s efforts were in vain, as our immigration enforcement operations were successful that day and every day since.”

In the long term, however, Parente warned that the result of such run-and-gun tactics by federal authorities could have ramifications well beyond the failure of a handful of cases.

“This could have a generational impact on the credibility of law enforcement,” Parente said. “They’re creating a culture of distrust.”

The post The Feds Keep Prosecuting Protesters Against ICE — and Losing appeared first on The Intercept.

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