US justice department dismisses charges against California union leader

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has moved to dismiss charges against a prominent California union leader who was arrested while protesting an immigration raid in Los Angeles last year, in the latest US government case against protesters to fall apart.

David Huerta, the president of Service Employees International Union United Service Workers West, was arrested at a June 2025 demonstration and has been fighting the charges ever since. On Monday, the US attorney’s office in LA filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him.

Huerta was initially charged with “conspiracy to impede an officer”, a serious felony, though prosecutors earlier this year downgraded those charges to a misdemeanor of “obstruction, resistance, or opposition of a federal officer”. The misdemeanor is now on track for dismissal.

The justice department in Los Angeles has aggressively prosecuted immigrants and protesters for “impeding” and “assaulting” immigration officers, but many of those cases have collapsed in court, with prosecutors facing a stunning streak of losses when the charges have gone to trial.

“This means the government is finally admitting what we knew from day one and what was obvious to anyone who saw the videos: the charge against me was baseless, meant to intimidate anyone who dares to speak out, organize, or demand justice,” Huerta said in a statement on Monday. “There was never a real case, only an attempt to punish and silence me for exercising my constitutional rights.”

The charges against Huerta stemmed from a 6 June 2025 protest against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in LA’s garment district at the start of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrant communities in southern California.

Huerta’s arrest was partially caught on camera, with footage showing him on the ground and agents on top of him during chaotic confrontations between officers and protesters. He was arrested and charged based on claims he was blocking a gate in front of a business’s warehouse where immigration agents were trying to make arrests.

Huerta was hospitalized after his arrest, and his prosecution became one of the first high-profile criminal cases against a demonstrator objecting to ICE’s operations. The charges sparked widespread outrage, with the LA mayor, Karen Bass, criticizing the federal government for targeting “one of the most respected labor leaders in this country” and treating him “like a criminal”.

Huerta’s union represents thousands of security officers, janitors, airport workers and other laborers across California.

In his statement on Monday, Huerta said he had been “singled out” for “loudly” questioning agents’ actions during the raid, and he recalled officers tackling and pepper-spraying him before he was detained: “I consider myself fortunate to have been only detained, considering the murders in Minneapolis, Houston, Miami, and the deplorable conditions at federal detention centers throughout the country.”

The justice department’s filing on Monday did not specify the reason for the dismissal, saying all parties agreed for the case to be dropped. Prosecutors’ motion called for the case to be fully dismissed “with prejudice” by the end of August, meaning charges could not be brought again, a major victory for Huerta and his lawyers.

Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the US attorney in LA, defended the prosecution in a statement, saying: “The Department of Justice does not arrest people for peacefully protesting.” McEvoy said the DoJ had reached an agreement with Huerta stipulating that if he continued to comply with the terms of his pre-trial release, the case would be entirely dropped.

McEvoy also said Huerta had “agreed to accept responsibility for his actions”, though no agreement has been filed in the case, and the justice department spokesperson did not respond to requests for a copy of any agreement. Huerta did not accept responsibility for any criminal activity in his statement to reporters, which decried Trump’s “weaponization of the judicial system”.

Huerta’s lawyers, Abbe David Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, said in a statement that he had been arrested for “peacefully protesting” and exercising his first amendment rights: “This case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration’s improper immigration actions. Today’s filing is proof that David and other critics will not be silenced.

“This case revealed that the Department of Justice was willing to charge a labor leader with a crime, hold it over him for months, and then walk away from it once the charge couldn’t survive scrutiny,” the lawyers said. “That is not how a justice system is supposed to work.”