As the military occupation of L.A. draws down and community organizers, activists, lawyers, and protestors prepare for ICE and DHS’s next moves, protestors charged with felonies during the first weekend of anti-ICE protests have had their charges dropped. The Guardian reveals that this is largely because federal agents were filing false affidavits that prosecutors did not end up using. In other words, federal agents seem to have been caught blatantly lying.

According to the Guardian article, officers made false statements, misinterpreted video footage, accused protestors of physical assaults that the officers themselves actually perpetrated, and even named a wrong defendant in an indictment. Why go through all the trouble to detain protestors, file charges, and have officers testify, only for charges to be dropped?

“It seems [that] this is a way to detain people, hold them in custody, instill fear and discourage people from exercising their first amendment rights,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, a former CA state prosecutor.

In a related story, according to sources talking to the LA Times via TPM, the U.S. Attorney’s office has been struggling to get grand juries to indict Los Angeles anti-ICE protestors. And U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is not happy about it!

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

The Guardian’s review of records found:

Out of nine “assault” and “impeding” felony cases the justice department filed immediately after the start of the protests and promoted by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecutors dismissed seven of them soon after filing the charges. In reports that led to the detention and prosecution of at least five demonstrators, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents made false statements about the sequence of events and misrepresented incidents captured on video. One DHS agent accused a protester of shoving an officer, when footage appeared to show the opposite: the officer forcefully pushed the protester. One indictment named the wrong defendant, a stunning error that has jeopardized one of the government’s most high-profile cases.

Revealed: records show border patrol gave inaccurate testimony about people it jailed. Prosecutors now face ‘embarrassing’ dismissals

US immigration officers made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during the massive demonstrations that rocked the city in June, according to federal law enforcement files obtained by the Guardian.

The officers’ testimony was cited in at least five cases filed by the US Department of Justice amid the unrest. The justice department has charged at least 26 people with “assaulting” and “impeding” federal officers and other crimes during the protests over immigration raids. Prosecutors, however, have since been forced to dismiss at least eight of those felonies, many of them which relied on officers’ inaccurate reports, court records show.

The justice department has also dismissed at least three felony assault cases it brought against Angelenos accused of interfering with arrests during recent immigration raids, the documents show.

The Guardian’s review of records found:

• Out of nine “assault” and “impeding” felony cases the justice department filed immediately after the start of the protests and promoted by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecutors dismissed seven of them soon after filing the charges.
• In reports that led to the detention and prosecution of at least five demonstrators, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents made false statements about the sequence of events and misrepresented incidents captured on video.
• One DHS agent accused a protester of shoving an officer, when footage appeared to show the opposite: the officer forcefully pushed the protester.
• One indictment named the wrong defendant, a stunning error that has jeopardized one of the government’s most high-profile cases.

“When I see felonies dismissed, that tells me either the federal officers have filed affidavits that are not truthful and that has been uncovered, or US attorneys reviewing the cases realize the evidence does not support the charges,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, a former California state prosecutor who is now director of Prosecutors Alliance Action, a criminal justice reform group.