Andrew Boutros let his office rig a grand jury against dissenting activists. The door was closed to the jurors who asked questions. The machine ground forward to indict four people for standing outside a building. When the machine jammed and the judge looked at the gears, you called the rust upsetting. You dismissed the case. You signed your name. You did not fire the hands that turned the wheel.

In July 2025, four activists gathered outside the Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago as federal agents carried out sweeping immigration arrests across the city. Prosecutors charged them with conspiracy to impede federal officers, a felony carrying years in prison. The first trial ended in a deadlocked jury. Federal District Judge April Perry then ordered a review of the grand jury transcripts, asking U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros about what she termed a specter of impropriety. Boutros acknowledged that a prosecutor from his office met privately with a grand juror outside formal proceedings and that grand jurors who questioned the government’s case were excluded from the indictment. Boutros told the court he had been unaware of the misconduct until recently. He said no one acted with the intent to mislead the court, that his staff was following the judge’s order to give the law, and that the conduct was upsetting. He dismissed the charges. He did not discipline the staff attorneys whose conduct the judge had scrutinized in prior proceedings. Defense attorney Michael Rabbitt noted the lack of accountability before walking back allegations of criminal conduct. The four activists left the courtroom without comment.

Andrew, the four people standing outside that building were watching the raids swallow their neighborhoods. They felt the cold air on their faces and the weight of the federal officers passing through the doors. Your office laid the weight of a felony charge on them. Conspiracy to impede federal officers. The grand jury was the forge.

You did not need an honest jury. You needed a closed room. Your prosecutor met a juror in the dark, outside the proceedings, where the law could not hear them. When other jurors raised their hands and asked questions, your office closed the door on them. You barred the ones who would not give you the indictment.

When the trial jury deadlocked, Judge Perry looked at the transcripts. The rust showed through the paint. You say you learned of it recently. You say it is upsetting. The word is flat in your mouth, Andrew. You chew it and swallow it. Your throat does not close. Your diaphragm does not drop. If it were your name on the felony charge, if it were your daughter’s body standing outside the building while the sweeps took her friends, the word upsetting would not leave your lips. It would be ash. It would catch in your windpipe and you would cough until your ribs ached. But it is not your name. It is not your daughter. It is the activists who spent months looking at the ceiling at night and measuring their lives in years of prison time. They walked out of your courtroom and did not speak. The fear that was carved into their muscles does not leave just because you signed a dismissal.

You say your staff was following the judge’s order to give the law. You say no one intended to mislead. You are a small man hiding behind a procedure. Your hands rest on the desk. They are clean enough to pick up a pen. They are clean enough to sign the papers. But they will not fire the prosecutors who met in the dark. They will not open the door to the jurors who asked why. The refusal to fire is the real indictment. The dismissal you signed is the polish on the machine. The machine is still running. The raids are still sweeping the streets. Your stomach does not turn when you read the morning docket. The coffee goes down. You turn the page.

The prophet Amos named the men who write the statutes to turn aside the needy from justice, who make the poor an easy prey. He did not call it an administrative error. He did not call it upsetting. He called it what it is: the grinding of the poor.

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 5:24

Andrew, the stream is dry. The stones in the creek are bare. You sign the paper and walk away. The stream does not run for the ones your office barred from the room.