CHICAGO — The incident on a sunny September morning outside the ICE processing facility in Broadview may have never been remembered, lost in all the turmoil surrounding Operation Midway Blitz and the resistance that grew out of it.

Instead, federal prosecutors went to a grand jury and secured felony conspiracy charges against six protesters who allegedly impeded an immigration agent’s vehicle, elevating the case now known as the “Broadview Six” to a defining moment of the Trump administration’s controversial deportation crackdown.

That made the spectacular collapse of the case this week all the more embarrassing for the U.S. attorney’s office, which has now been accused of missteps before the grand jury and a potential cover-up — including the redaction of grand jury materials — that led a federal judge to question whether she can rely on the word of the prosecutors appearing before her.

“Your sole goal is to do justice,” an agitated U.S. District Judge April Perry told the team of prosecutors during a remarkable closed-door session on Thursday, according to a transcript. “Your client is justice itself. I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”

An hour later, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros made a rare appearance in court to personally apologize to the judge and announce he was dismissing all charges against the remaining four defendants in the case.

The move canceled a trial that had been scheduled to begin Tuesday and promised to be a spectacle. But regardless of the abrupt termination of the case, the Broadview Six case will likely continue to be an albatross for the U.S. attorney’s office for months to come.

The first fallout came Friday morning when attorneys for Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw filed an emergency motion seeking preservation of U.S. attorney’s office emails and texts about the case. The move was a precursor to what will surely be a defense request for sanctions, which could range from financial reimbursement for their clients’ legal fees and potentially against the individual prosecutors in the case.

Another shoe dropped as U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office announced that the former lead prosecutor in the Broadview Six case, Sheri Mecklenburg, had been terminated from her new role with the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington.

In her remarks Thursday, Perry indicated that given what occurred in the grand jury and after, claims of vindictive prosecution that she initially rejected could also deserve a second look.

“I, at the time, was operating on a presumption of regular grand jury proceedings, which these were very clearly not,” Perry said. “So based upon what I’ve seen in the grand jury transcripts, the calculus has changed and it has changed considerably.”

Perry said the defense was “entitled to a briefing and perhaps a hearing on the issue of vindictive prosecution,” in addition to sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations.

Boutros, meanwhile, has acknowledged there was misconduct in the grand jury. But he also publicly and privately defended the merits of bringing the case, saying the evidence showed a crime was committed and that his team was fully prepared to go to trial on Tuesday on the misdemeanor counts of impeding a federal official.

“Once I became aware of the conduct in the grand jury, within 24 hours we dismissed (the indictment),” Boutros told Perry. “We then filed an information that has nothing to do with the grand jury, and I was prepared and still would have been prepared to go to trial on the misdemeanor count. Because I do believe in the rule of law.”

Boutros, who has consistently touted a mantra of Chicago being a “law and order” district, said the statute makes it a crime to impede any federal official, not just immigration agent.

“The conduct that took place there, if it had occurred to a federal judge or to a sitting member of Congress, we would not be having discussions about whether or not that was appropriate or not appropriate, and there would be uniform view in agreement that the conduct that took place is unacceptable in a civilized society,” Boutros said in court.

Hours later, in an all-office email, Boutros told his staff it was a “tough but important day” for the office, but doubled down on the defense of the case, calling the trial team of three prosecutors “courageous.”

“While I firmly believe that a crime was committed, this case was beset with a number of challenges,” Boutros wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Tribune. “But make no mistake, today was an important day for the Office. …These prosecutors fought for the rule of law and fought for the safety and security of our federal officials and employees—and, we thank them for that.”

Boutros also praised Perry — whose insistence on seeing the unredacted grand jury transcripts exposed the wrongdoing — for representing a “strong and independent federal judiciary that wants to ensure itself and the public that our prosecutors and Office acted properly.”

“Because at the end of the day, our job is not to convict at all costs or even to just convict, but instead to do Justice and to do so while following the rules and respecting the rights of our defendants,” Boutros wrote in the email.

The dismissal of the Broadview case, meanwhile, adds to the U.S. attorney’s office’s already abysmal record in cases related to Midway Blitz.

A total of 33 people have been criminally charged by the office on counts ranging from assaulting agents to murder-for-hire. As of Friday, 24 of those have been cleared, including several where grand juries refused to return indictments and others where prosecutors dismissed charges ahead of trial. Four others have entered into deferred prosecution agreements with the U.S. attorney’s office that will see charges eventually dismissed.

Only one defendant, Juan Espinoza Martinez, has gone to trial. In January, a jury swiftly acquitted him on charges alleging he tried to put a bounty on the head of then-Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, who was leading Midway Blitz.

Two people have pleaded guilty in cases related to the assault of an agent. Charges are pending against three others, including Diego Emmanuel Reyes, who was recently charged with ramming an ICE agent’s vehicle in Brighton Park on Oct. 4. Reyes’ indictment was made public on the day the Broadview Six case collapsed.

The Broadview Six case was beset by controversy from the moment the indictment was brought last October as the defense has alleged the case was brought amid pressure from the administration of President Donald Trump and was nothing more than an attempt to silence protesters of the president’s draconian immigration policies.

Charged in the case were Straw; former congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh; her deputy campaign manager, Andre Martin; 45th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Rabbitt; Catherine Sharp, a onetime candidate for the Cook County Board; and Joselyn Walsh, a part-time garden store worker and singer.

Prosecutors alleged the defendants were part of a group that 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, and crowded together to impede the vehicle.

At the time, Trump’s controversial immigration enforcement mission was in high gear and tensions were sky high. The Broadview facility was filled with dozens of immigrants who’d been snatched off the streets. Clashes between protesters and agents were an almost daily occurrence and were often met with tear gas and pepper spray.

Video of the incident that would have been central to the trial showed the group of some 100 protesters, who had been peacefully protesting at an intersection just east of the facility, pushing against the front of the agent’s black Chevrolet Tahoe, while others threw objects like stuffed animals. Chants arose, including one saying “(Expletive) this pig!”

Straw, wearing a jacket clearly marked with an Oak Park logo, was captured on one video tossing his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee onto the windshield of the Tahoe. Rabbitt, meanwhile, joined in on chants of “shame!” as he pushed against the right side of the vehicle. Abughazaleh and Martin could be seen doing the same along the Tahoe’s left side.

As the SUV neared a perimeter fence, agents in military fatigues started firing pepper spray balls into the crowd. The SUV rolled to safety after taking minor damage, including a broken side mirror and windshield wiper. Someone scratched “PIG” into the side of the car. No one was hurt.

In the ensuing months, attorneys for the six people charged, most of whom had ties to local Democratic politics, accused the U.S. attorney’s office of a politically motivated prosecution. They sought records of any White House influence on the decision to bring charges — which prosecutors vehemently denied. And they filed motions arguing the indictment concocted a conspiracy out of thin air and criminalized First Amendment-protected free speech.

In February, the original prosecutor who had led the grand jury, Mecklenburg, left the U.S. attorney’s office in February for a job with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. Weeks later, all charges against Sharp and Walsh were dismissed. And in April, prosecutors announced the lone felony conspiracy count against the remaining defendants was also being cut.

But it wasn’t until this past week, days before trial on the remaining misdemeanor counts was set to begin, that the case finally fell apart completely when Perry agreed to look at unredacted grand jury transcripts to “see if there is anything suspicious” about portions that had been mysteriously removed by the U.S. attorney’s office.

What the transcripts revealed was shocking, Perry said. Before two separate grand juries last year, a federal prosecutor repeatedly stepped over the line, including “vouching” about the strength of the evidence, telling panel members who disagreed with the prosecution’s theory of the case that they could just leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a grand juror outside the proceedings.

The first grand jury refused to return an indictment, leading to a second panel being convened, a transcript of Perry’s remarks showed. That time, several grand jurors “made comments” and walked out of the proceedings. The testimony of the agent ended abruptly, and they had to start anew the next day to get the indictment.

“I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts,” Perry said.

The unredacted grand jury transcripts have since been turned over to the defense. In his motion Friday seeking preservation of U.S. attorney’s office emails, Parente said he finds the level of misconduct “nauseating” and that he “has lost complete faith and confidence in this U.S. Attorney’s Office to do the right thing on its own.”

“The government used this court to dismiss counts, file a superseding information, all without ever disclosing a single reason behind its mysterious shell game,” Parente wrote. “Having now digested the actual transcripts of what occurred in these secret Grand Jury proceedings counsel has no doubt that severe sanctions will be forthcoming.”

Mecklenburg, meanwhile, was let go from her position at the Senate Judiciary Committee due to the “gravity of the charges” in the Broadview case, according to a written statement from a Durbin spokeswoman Friday.

“Senator Durbin agrees with Judge Perry’s concerns about this deeply flawed prosecution,” the statement read. “Our office had no knowledge of this alleged misconduct until yesterday’s reporting.”

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