An Air Force Veteran Protested ICE. The Justice Department Charged Him With Felony Assault.

Agents knocked 70-year-old Dana Briggs to the pavement. As they moved in to arrest him, he tried to hand his phone to another protester. His arm brushed an agent's arm. He was arrested, and charged with a felony.

Dana Briggs is a 70-year-old Air Force veteran and a U.S. citizen. Agents knocked him to the pavement outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. As they arrested him, his arm brushed an agent's arm. The Justice Department charged him with felony assault of a federal officer.

Dana Briggs drove about ninety miles from Rockford to get there.

He is a United States citizen and a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He was 70 years old. He has said he has been protesting things he thought were wrong for decades, and that nothing like this had ever happened to him. He was wearing a shirt that read Vets Against Trump.

On the evening of Saturday, September 27, 2025, he was standing in the street outside the Department of Homeland Security detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, with a group of other protesters. Border Patrol agents came out and told the crowd to clear the street.

Briggs stayed where he was.

Then he asked why.

What the government says happened next

This account is not disputed by anyone, because it is the government's own. It comes from a sworn affidavit filed by a Homeland Security Investigations special agent two days later, to justify the charge.

An agent made physical contact with Briggs and he fell backwards onto the pavement.

Agents then moved in to arrest him for refusing to leave the street. As they did, he tried to hand his phone to another protester. A second agent reached out to stop him from handing it off. His right arm made contact with her left arm.

This is how the agent who swore it described the moment:

*"At that moment, another USBP agent ('Victim A'), wearing a USBP uniform that bore insignia identifying Victim A as a USBP agent, reached forward with Victim A's left arm to prevent BRIGGS from handing off his phone. In response, BRIGGS swung his right arm toward Victim A's left arm and, in doing so, made physical contact with Victim A's left arm."*

The Justice Department then charged Briggs with a felony.

A federal case

Briggs was arrested at the scene, taken inside the facility, and held. He spent that night in custody. He spent Sunday in custody. He was released on Monday afternoon on a $10,000 bond, with his travel restricted to the Northern District of Illinois.

On September 29 the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois announced charges against five people arrested at Broadview that weekend, and named him.

*"DANA BRIGGS, 70, of Rockford, Ill., is charged with felony assault of a federal officer. Briggs allegedly made physical contact with an agent's arm while the agent attempted to extend the safety perimeter around the facility."*

The United States Attorney said his office would "take swift action when law enforcement personnel are criminally assaulted or individuals cross the line from peaceful protests to criminal mischief, assaults on federal officers, obstruction of justice, or the destruction of federal property."

Days later the Department of Homeland Security told ABC7 Chicago that Briggs "struck a female Border Patrol officer, leading to his arrest for assault," and added that he "was verbally abusive towards agents."

The agent who said Briggs struck her did not have her camera on. The affiant then said he had obtained and watched the footage from the agent who did physically interact with Briggs, and wrote:

*"Due to the position of BRIGGS' body relative to that agent at the time of BRIGGS' arrest, that BWC does not depict BRIGGS swinging his arm in the direction of Victim A."*

A charge that kept shrinking

On October 7, the government filed an Information reducing the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor under the same statute, dropping the word assault and the physical-contact element. On that same day, a federal grand jury refused to indict two other people arrested at Broadview on September 27.

Briggs pleaded not guilty on October 10, and a jury trial was set for December 8. On November 19 the defense filed its witness list, disclosing that it intended to call Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, who appears on one of the evidentiary videos leading agents out of the facility toward the protesters.

The next day, the government moved to dismiss.

November 20

Prosecutors are entitled to drop a case, and usually a court simply lets them. Asked for a reason, the government said only that after a review begun in early November it had "concluded that dismissal is a fair result."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel A. Fuentes granted the motion, then did two things he did not have to do. He dismissed the charge with prejudice. And he wrote a nine-page opinion the same day explaining himself.

Briggs was not alone. Five people were charged over that single evening in Broadview, and in each of those five cases Fuentes had required the agent swearing the complaint to confirm under oath that video existed, that the affiant had watched it, and that it corroborated the affidavit. All five prosecutions are now over. Two ended when grand juries refused to indict. One ended when the government looked at more body camera footage and concluded its evidence was insufficient. One ended over the defendant's medical condition. The last was Briggs.

*"A 'no bill' vote by a grand jury was virtually unheard of in this district until Operation Midway Blitz. The last and only one the Court can remember was from the early part of this century. Then, in the past two months, at least three have occurred."*

Quoting the Supreme Court's 1935 decision in *Berger v. United States*, that a prosecutor "may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones," the opinion closes:

"Today the Court stops short of concluding that the government struck any foul blows. But in charging Briggs, it sought to strike hard blows. It swung and missed – multiple times."

What he is left with

Briggs said he was taken to Loyola University Medical Center the night of his arrest and handcuffed to the hospital bed, and that he came away with cuts and bruises on both arms and wrists. Photographs of those injuries were taken on October 3 by an investigator from the Federal Defender Program, and hospital records were listed as defense exhibits. The government moved to exclude both as irrelevant.

He said he has a heart condition, that his medication was at home, and that he spent the weekend in custody without it.

And at about one in the morning, in a Homeland Security facility in Chicago, a federal agent swabbed the inside of his mouth. He said nobody told him he could refuse.

The charge is gone and cannot come back. His DNA has not gone anywhere. On May 6, 2026, Briggs and three other people arrested outside that same facility sued the federal government, asking a court to order their samples destroyed and their genetic profiles removed from federal databases.

That lawsuit asks for no money. Briggs has filed no damages claim of any kind, no excessive force suit, no Federal Tort Claims Act action. Ten months after the arrest, no agent involved has been publicly identified, disciplined, or referred for investigation in any record we could find.

He was asked afterward whether it had changed his mind about showing up.

"I stood up for something I believe in and will continue to do so, until my last breath."