Yet another “Operation: Midway Blitz” case has been thrown out of federal court. Oak Park attorney Scott Sakiyama received a petty citation in October for allegedly impeding Border Patrol agents. Magistrate Judge Heather McShain dismissed the case last month.
Court documents Sakiyama gave to The TRiiBE specifically show his citation was dismissed at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Jan. 12. Sakiyama said he received news of the dismissal notice from his own attorney after sending federal prosecutors “a couple of videos that we had.”
A source in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago separately corroborated that a prosecutor recommended dismissing Sakiyama’s citation after reviewing video footage his attorney provided. The TRiiBE has not received or reviewed the footage.
Sakiyama also provided The TRiiBE a copy of his citation, referred to as a “violation notice” on the document, and the Border Patrol agents’ “statement of probable cause” for conducting his arrest. The statement, written in the third person, makes mention of an agent named Saul Rivas, who is said to be from the El Centro Sector in Southern California, and two others identified as R. Inglet and J. Parker.
The language of the probable cause statement – as Sakiyama notes – is inconsistent with his citation. The citation accuses him of “cutting off [an] agent’s vehicle,” but the probable cause statement mentions no such thing.
“It has their version of events, which just doesn’t make sense,” Sakiyama said.
The citation is also contradicted by video footage shared to Facebook from the day of his arrest. That footage shows Sakiyama being pulled out of the driver’s side of his car, which is stopped behind the agents’ vehicle, not in front of it.
The probable cause statement claims Sakiyama (whose name the agents repeatedly misspell as Sakiyam) was “tailing agents” and “driving erratically, not stopping at red lights or at stop signs.”
“SAKIYAM’s [sic] aggressive unsafe driving was impeding Border Patrol Agents from being able to conduct their duties safely,” the probable cause statement for Sakiyama’s now-dismissed charge reads. It also states the agents warned Sakiyama to stop “impeding” them before they arrested him.
The TRiiBE previously spoke with Sakiyama on Oct. 21, the day after federal agents pulled him from his car outside of his child’s school in Oak Park. Then as now, he disputes the federal agents’ narrative.
Sakiyama said he had been following the agents’ vehicle in Oak Park with his passenger-side window down, while blowing on a whistle to let neighbors know they were in the area. He said federal agents jumped out the van with their guns drawn at the intersection of Harvard Street and S. Grove Avenue and threatened to smash his car’s driver-side window. His claims are corroborated by the video footage shared to Facebook.
“Exit your vehicle, or we’re gonna break your window and we’ll drag you out,” an agent can be heard saying in the footage.
According to both Sakiyama’s and the agents’ accounts, he was detained and taken to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview to receive the citation. While in the car with agents, Sakiyama said he saw them receive messages in a chat group titled “Chiraq Team 2.”
He also recalled there being four agents in the unmarked government vehicle with him, not three as the probable cause statement reports.
Sakiyama’s arrest occurred 10 days after he spoke to the press on behalf of the family of Paul Ivery, a fellow Oak Park resident and an intellectually disabled Black man that federal agents similarly accused of assault. Ivery was one of five people arrested and federally charged in connection to protesting outside the Broadview ICE facility on Sept. 27, all of whose cases were ultimately tossed out.
Court records indicate Ivery agreed to speak with federal agents while in their custody at the Broadview facility, without a lawyer present.
Federal court records also indicate that charges stemming from “Operation: Midway Blitz” against 15 separate defendants have all fallen apart in court. Only one case has yet reached trial; that of Chicago resident Juan Espinoza Martinez, who the government accused of placing a murder hit on Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino. Although a jury acquitted Espinoza Martinez on Jan. 22, ICE agents still took him into custody after the trial concluded.
Sakiyama has a personal connection to yet another Midway Blitz-related case; that of the “Broadview Six” who are facing conspiracy and impeding charges over their participation in a protest outside the Broadview ICE facility on Sept. 26. Four of the six are local political officials or hopefuls: left-leaning Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, Democratic committeeman Michael Rabbitt, Chicago 40th Ward Chief of Staff Cat Sharp, and Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw.
Sakiyama is not representing any of the Six in court, but he said he knows Straw well, and has attended pretrial court hearings for the Six. He argued the case against them isn’t “serious” and, instead, seemed designed to chill protest.
“It almost feels like they’re trying to say, if you show up at a protest, you’re a conspirator, which just doesn’t square with the First Amendment,” Sakiyama said.
He raised particular concern over the fact that a majority of the Six are political figures.
“It really feels like they’re trying to target leaders and people who are outspoken,” he said.
