A 70-year-old air force veteran who had been charged with felony assault on a federal officer as he protested an ICE raid has told the Guardian he is now considering a civil lawsuit after all charges against him were dropped.
The US Department of Justice moved to dismiss all charges against Dana Briggs, who had been charged despite a video of the incident, which showed masked Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents advancing on the elderly veteran and knocking him over.
In court papers, the justice department had earlier alleged Briggs committed assault when he “made physical contact with an agent’s arm while the agent attempted to extend the safety perimeter” around an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, where Briggs was protesting ramped-up immigration raids in the community.
US magistrate judge Gabriel A Fuentes said he agreed to dismiss the case after reviewing video from agents’ body-worn camera, which the court had allowed the government to shield from public disclosure.
Briggs told the Guardian he is now considering launching a civil lawsuit over his treatment. “I stood up for something I believe in and will continue to do so, until my last breath,” he said.
He also relayed his own experience of the incident for the first time, saying that prior to being knocked over, he was asking the federal agents protecting the Chicago-area ICE facility: “How do you go home at night and explain to your community and family what you are doing to other people who look like you?”
After his arrest and initial detention at the ICE Broadview facility, Briggs said he was transported to Loyola University Medical Center, where he was handcuffed to a hospital bed and treated for “cuts and bruises on both my forearms and wrists from being knocked down and zip tied”.
In a court filing that moved to dismiss the case, Andrew Boutros, the US attorney for the northern district of Illinois, did not offer an explanation.
In an emailed response to questions from the Guardian, assistant US attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick said the office “is constantly evaluating new facts and information relating to cases and investigations arising out of Operation Midway Blitz, the largest ever law enforcement surge in the Northern District of Illinois”.
“This continuous review process applies to all matters,” Fitzpatrick said, “whether charged or under investigation. It helps ensure that the interests of justice are served in each and every case, and that those cases that are charged are appropriately adjudicated through our federal court system.” The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to inquiries.
Briggs’s prosecution had drawn national attention – and condemnation from decorated military veterans in Congress.
His case is one of eight identified by the Guardian, where US military veterans have faced arrest and injury in confrontation with federal agents over Trump administration policies.
Another, Afghanistan war veteran Sean Charles Dunn, was acquitted earlier this month after a jury in Washington DC found he did not commit assault when he threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent during the early days of the national guard’s deployment to Washington DC.
“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted at the officers on 10 August, calling them “fascists”. A video of the incident went viral.
Jose Vasquez, executive director of the veterans’ advocacy group Common Defense, which counts Briggs as a member, said the dismissal of charges against Briggs and the acquittal in Dunn’s case “should remind prosecutors and the public alike that dissent is not a crime”.
“Dana, like so many veterans who continue to exercise their first amendment rights in the face of injustice, was exercising the same courage and moral conviction he once showed in uniform,” Vasquez said.
In another incident in Portland, video shows an agent grabbing Afghanistan war veteran Daryn Herzberg by the hair and slamming his face into the ground multiple times while saying: “You’re not talking shit any more are you?” according to a Federal Tort Claims Act complaint filed by his attorney.
A DHS spokesperson said Herzberg, a former marine sergeant who was honorably discharged in 2012, “is well known for acts of violence outside the ICE facility” and had “used fake blood to falsify injuries”. His attorney denied the allegations. Hertzberg has not been charged with a crime.
