High Dismissal Rate in Trump DOJ Cases

PHOTO CAPTION: FILE PHOTO: Law enforcement officers and protestors clash during a protest against federal immigration sweeps, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 11, 2025. REUTERS/David Swanson/File Photo

A Reuters review found that nearly one-third of completed federal cases brought under the Trump administration against people accused of assaulting or impeding government officers ended in dismissal — almost four times the usual rate across federal criminal prosecutions.

The administration charged at least 851 people with attacking or obstructing federal officers. Of the cases completed so far, 31% were dismissed, compared with about 8% of federal criminal cases overall, according to Federal Judicial Center records.

Many of the cases emerged from the administration’s immigration enforcement campaign, although the defendants also included people accused of assaulting other federal employees, such as postal workers.

The consequences often continued after the charges disappeared.

Christian Garcia acknowledged throwing an empty plastic water bottle toward officers guarding a federal building near Los Angeles during an immigration protest last summer.

Garcia said the wind blew the bottle back toward him and it did not hit anyone. Still, federal agents arrested him, held him for three days and charged him with an offense carrying up to one year in prison.

Garcia, a 32-year-old amateur photographer, said he lost his jobs as a security guard and undercover shopper after his employers told him investigators had contacted them.

Prosecutors later dropped the case without offering a public explanation.

“It’s like I got no justice whatsoever,” Garcia said. “My whole life changed in one day.”

He said he was unable to recover his jobs and that an agent never returned the phone seized during his arrest.

The original charging document said Garcia was “observed throwing an object” toward officers while others in the crowd threw rocks and water bottles that struck officers’ shields.

Reuters review finds unusually high dismissal rate

Reuters collected federal court records for every person charged with assaulting or impeding federal officers between January 2025 and March and tracked what happened in those cases.

The review included thousands of court filings and interviews with more than 15 investigators, prosecutors and defendants.

Prosecutors performed especially poorly in cases involving people detained during immigration protests. About 45% of the 86 completed protest-related cases had been dropped by the end of May, Reuters found.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the department’s leadership had made clear that “anyone who assaults or obstructs law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said prosecutors should hold people accountable for assaults on officers but must respond appropriately when mitigating circumstances emerge.

“If there are mitigating factors identified in a case, then prosecutors must also act appropriately to inform the court, and in some cases downgrade or drop charges,” Pels said.

Reuters interviewed six people who said they lost jobs, incurred legal expenses or received online threats after federal officials publicized their arrests, even though prosecutors later abandoned their cases.

The encounters included a woman who backed her sport utility vehicle into an agent’s vehicle at low speed, a man who challenged an agent to a boxing match without throwing a punch, and a person who jumped onto a Homeland Security vehicle during a protest.

Federal prosecutors also charged a Washington man after he threw a sandwich that bounced off an immigration agent’s body armor.

Other cases involved serious alleged violence that would likely have been prosecuted under any administration. One Minnesota woman was accused in January of biting off the tip of a federal agent’s finger.

Court records and people familiar with the prosecutions said the scale of the Trump administration’s campaign and its threshold for bringing cases represented a departure from previous Justice Department practice.

Two officials familiar with the matter said the department instructed prosecutors last year to explain to officials in Washington whenever they declined to pursue one of the cases.

The officials, who requested anonymity, said the requirement pressured prosecutors to accept cases that might previously have been rejected.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told immigration officials in Arizona in May that the department would prosecute any assault against an officer “no matter what.”

Convictions lag typical federal rate

Federal prosecutors typically secure convictions in about 90% of criminal cases, according to Federal Judicial Center records.

The administration obtained convictions in 65% of the 481 completed officer-assault or obstruction cases examined by Reuters.

The vast majority of the dismissed cases were dropped at prosecutors’ request. The remaining cases among the 851 reviewed were still pending.

Kyle Boynton, a former federal prosecutor and FBI agent with experience investigating assaults, said the high dismissal rate suggested authorities were moving too quickly to handle the cases effectively.

Prosecutors usually gave no detailed explanation when withdrawing charges, instead stating that dismissal was “in the interests of justice.”

That was the explanation provided in the case of Lizzie Rose.

Rose was charged in January after backing her car into an SUV carrying immigration agents in Minneapolis. Video recorded by a neighbor showed a low-speed collision.

The Department of Homeland Security posted Rose’s mugshot on social media and declared that the agency “will not be intimidated.”

Rose said threats flooded her social media accounts after her photo appeared online and in news reports. She temporarily left her home and sent her two children to stay with their father.

“It consumed our lives,” Rose said. “It was every day.”

Rose, 42, was also placed on leave from her job at a Minneapolis nonprofit.

Dismissed cases raise credibility concerns

In Chicago, prosecutors dropped charges against 21-year-old Luci Mazur after an agent alleged that she had grabbed his arm and resisted arrest.

A judge noted that the agent had sworn under oath that he had reviewed video evidence supporting the allegation. The judge said body-camera footage later played a role in prosecutors’ decision to dismiss the case.

Four current and former law enforcement officials said pursuing cases in which agents’ accounts were later shown to be inaccurate risked weakening the trust judges normally place in government attorneys.

Michael Rabbitt, a local Democratic political official in Chicago, attended a protest last September outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview.

Rabbitt said demonstrators moved aside for passing vehicles when directed by local police but that an ICE vehicle did not wait for the crowd to clear.

Video showed Rabbitt keeping his hand on the side of the slowly moving vehicle for about 30 seconds.

About one month later, while Rabbitt and his wife were in Portugal for their 30th anniversary, an FBI agent left him a message saying that he had been indicted and should surrender.

The charges included a misdemeanor for impeding the vehicle and a felony count of conspiring to impede or injure officers. Rabbitt called the conspiracy allegation “ridiculous.”

Prosecutors dropped the conspiracy charge in early May but initially continued pursuing the misdemeanor.

Days before the scheduled trial, a federal judge criticized prosecutors’ handling of the case.

The judge accused them of improperly shaping the federal grand jury by excusing people considered unlikely to vote for an indictment, suggesting jurors could rely on a prosecutor’s credibility instead of the evidence and communicating with jurors outside the grand jury room.

The Justice Department then dismissed all remaining charges.

In an unusual step, prosecutors said they would not oppose a defense request for the department to pay some legal costs incurred by Rabbitt and other defendants charged in connection with the protest.

“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,” Judge April Perry said.

“That trust has been broken.”

(Source: Reuters)