Another Operation Midway Blitz protest case evaporates in federal court

Caroline Kubzansky, Chicago Tribune on Feb 11, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

CHICAGO — A judge has dismissed yet another set of Operation Midway Blitz related charges, this time against against a man who had been accused of resisting or impeding federal agents during the Trump administration’s expansive immigration raids in and around Chicago late last year.

Prosecutors moved to drop the charges Feb. 5, according to court records. Erik Meier had been due back in court for a hearing Wednesday morning, with a trial scheduled for March 9, records show.

Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez’s Tuesday order to dismiss the misdemeanor case against Meier without prejudice makes him at least the 17th defendant swept up and charged in protests around Operation Midway Blitz last fall to later be cleared. Meier’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is the latest in a string of charges stemming from the Blitz to later fall apart weeks or months after they are brought. That trend that prompted one federal judge to excoriate the U.S. attorney’s office for bringing charges at such speed that later facts hamstrung a grand jury indictment or forced prosecutors to dismiss a case as not provable.

The initial accusations against protesters — such assault for shutting a car door on the leg of a federal agent or ramming and domestic terrorism for participants in protesting car caravans — mirror repeated claims from senior officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that their agents suffered horrific abuses at the hands of protesters. But those allegations of abuse have disintegrated under judicial review over and over, even as DHS officials insist they stand by the statements they made in September and October at the height of the blitz.

Marimar Martinez, the highest-profile defendant to be cleared of wrongdoing while protesting the operation, has said that all she wants is “a simple sorry” and an acknowledgment from the government that she is not a domestic terrorist.

Late Tuesday, the government released a new trove of evidence in the now-dismissed case against Martinez, the 30-year-old citizen who was shot while protesting against the raids in the Brighton Park neighborhood.

Martinez, a Montessori School teacher whom DHS officials called a domestic terrorist, still cannot close her right hand over a pen, she told members of Congress last week. The case against her fell apart weeks after text messages from the agent who shot her surfaced in court, showing him bragging about wounding Martinez and declaring that he was up for “another round of (expletive) around and find out.”

Of the 106 people identified in a Tribune analysis as having been caught in the federal dragnet while protesting the operation, just nine resulted in pending felony charges.

____