After rocky first year, Chicago’s top federal prosecutor says he isn’t taking orders from Washington

When Chicago’s top federal prosecutor is asked if his office takes marching orders from Washington, he doesn’t mince words.

“You should write this down,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros recently told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter.

“[There is] not a single case, ok, involving politics in our decision making. Full stop. Period. Zero,” Boutros said. “And anyone who says otherwise is misstating reality. And anyone who says otherwise is an armchair expert who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Period.”

He said he isn’t done with Operation Midway Blitz. Nor public corruption — he said people should “stay tuned.” And having reached the end of a volatile first year in office, in which President Donald Trump has been accused of weaponizing the Justice Department, Boutros said he has cases to bring “based on facts, law and the equities.”

But his first year also featured an “unprecedented exodus” of prosecutors from the office he leads, critics note. Most section chiefs left. And convictions have yet to emerge from the flurry of charges the office filed during Midway Blitz, the aggressive deportation campaign that hit the Chicago area last year.

It charged Marimar Martinez, the woman shot by a Border Patrol agent and labeled a “domestic terrorist” before the charges were dropped. And Juan Espinoza Martinez, the man acquitted of putting a hit on then-U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.

In his most extensive commentary to date about Midway Blitz, Boutros acknowledged all did not go according to plan. Especially when it came to working with an “out of town” group of agents.

But Boutros said repeatedly, “We want to get it right.”

He made his remarks in a wide-ranging conversation with the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune to mark Tuesday’s one-year anniversary of the day he took office.

Federal prosecutors under ‘unprecedented pressures’

Boutros, the son of immigrants from Egypt, is the first person of color to hold the office. He’s overtly patriotic, calls Chicago his “adopted” home and often drops references to Al Capone and the 1985 Chicago Bears.

His office moved quickly last year to level a terrorism charge against the man accused of setting a woman on fire on the Blue Line, and a weapons charge this month against the man separately charged with the murder of Loyola University Chicago freshman Sheridan Gorman.

Christopher Amon, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Chicago, said violent crime prosecutions “were not a priority” for the U.S. attorney’s office before Boutros’ arrival — and now that’s changed.

Boutros had kind words for controversial Attorney General Pam Bondi, even after Trump fired her last week. Bondi first appointed Boutros to his post, and Boutros said “she was tremendously good to Chicago and to this office.” The city’s federal judges later chose Boutros to serve in the role on a more permanent basis.

Still, Boutros knows he has his critics, having once referred to their “sneering disbelief.” He’s endured grand jurors refusing to hand up indictments against at least three people — considered a rare rebuke. And a magistrate judge in November questioned the charging decisions of Boutros’ office during Midway Blitz, noting that “these are not ordinary times” at Chicago’s federal courthouse.

Defense attorneys are also exploring whether the White House involved itself in the conspiracy case brought by Boutros’ office against a group of Midway Blitz protesters known as the “Broadview Six.”

Ron Safer, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago who left the U.S attorney’s office in 1999, told the Sun-Times that the “unprecedented exodus of experience, talent and leadership” under Boutros “diminishes the office in ways that are obvious and ways that are not so obvious.”

He said things might be different if Boutros’ office appeared to be “resisting” a Justice Department that Safer said has “sprinted from its founding principles.”

But another office alum, Joe Thompson, said “unprecedented pressures” have been placed on U.S. attorney’s offices across the country. Thompson is the former high-ranking federal prosecutor who left office in Minnesota after the fatal shooting of Renee Good.

Now in private practice, Thompson’s clients include indicted journalist Don Lemon. He served in Chicago’s U.S. attorney’s office from 2009 until 2014, led Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office for several months in 2025 and served as second-in-command until shortly after Good was shot by an immigration officer.

“I think [Boutros] is in an incredibly difficult situation,” Thompson told the Sun-Times. “I think even [former U.S. Attorney] Patrick Fitzgerald would struggle to be U.S. attorney in the current environment, and Andrew certainly is having to navigate some rocky waters.”

Blitz cases have collapsed — but more are coming

There are “some very serious cases” still coming out of Midway Blitz, Boutros warned.

“You can’t commit a serious crime in this district and think that that’s OK,” he said. “There will be consequences.”

The handling of nonimmigration crimes tied to Midway Blitz is perhaps the most publicly prominent part of Boutros’ first year in office. Federal prosecutors charged 32 known people with such crimes, but no one has been convicted. Twenty have already been cleared.

Federal prosecutors normally boast a conviction rate around 90%. They’re expected to bring charges only when they can prove them to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Boutros explained that, after the first 10 days of Midway Blitz, his office realized “the protocols that we had applied in other cases and in other matters for decades and decades were not really well suited for the Blitz cases.”

Boutros said they then shifted from filing charges largely for “reactive arrests” by agents to an “investigate and then evaluate” approach.

He said the traditional protocols didn’t work because “we were dealing with an out-of-town group” of hundreds of agents who “weren’t accustomed to the Chicago procedures, Chicago training.” He declined to answer questions about trust in those agents.

“We had a visiting law enforcement group that came from the border, came several hundred strong, and they were brought into the city, and so there was obviously a difference of approach between maybe how they can do things — or do things — at the border,” Boutros said.

Crucially, Boutros said the workload for his office far exceeded the 32 known defendants. Not only did his team meet every morning “with the entire federal law enforcement apparatus in Chicago,” he said, but it reviewed “hundreds” of cases and wound up declining many charges.

A chart produced during Midway Blitz litigation shows that, among 92 people arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection between Sept. 2 and Oct. 29, charges were declined against 20 of them. That doesn’t include arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Midway Blitz also coincided with the longest government shutdown in history, Boutros noted.

“Our job was to ensure that there was law and order, peace, and that we respected First Amendment rights and other rights but that there was law and order that was happening, still, in the city,” Boutros said.

The result was “not perfect,” he said, but “not for lack of wanting to get it right.” He stressed that his team is willing to reconsider the cases it’s already charged based on “new video, new information, new facts, new equities.”

But there’s a cost to defendants who are charged with federal crimes, even if those charges go away. A federal prosecution is intimidating. It carries the threat of prison time. Damaging news stories spread online.

Thompson said there’s “a real risk to the ongoing credibility of an office” when so many cases are dropped, abandoned or end in acquittals.

“It’s a significant red flag,” Thompson said.

Resignations come with a cost

Several veteran prosecutors left Boutros’ office in the last year, including nearly every criminal section chief. They took with them experience handling public corruption, violent crime and national security. Many of the section chiefs left later in Boutros' first year, after the start of Midway Blitz.

Boutros acknowledged it was a year of “transition.” But he touts the experience of a core team that includes First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Yonan, an 18-year veteran of the office; and criminal division chief Rick Young, a 24-year veteran.

Former prosecutors who left during Boutros’ first year either declined to comment for this article or did not respond to messages from the Sun-Times. Thompson, who left Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office in January, said everyone leaves “for his or her own reasons.”

“Some of those might be politics,” Thompson said. “Whether they disagree with the administration’s priority, or the U.S. attorney’s priorities. It could be more general: The type of case work they’re getting isn’t as professionally satisfying as they maybe had before.”

Regardless, he said it’s been happening around the country, in offices big and small.

Boutros explained that, “some people left because I told them I was going to demote them. Some people left because they came into my office and they said that they strongly dislike this administration and cannot work for this administration.”

"Some of them came to me and told me they were leaving because of the Blitz,” Boutros said.

But there’s a price to pay when so many veterans walk out the door, Safer said. It goes beyond institutional knowledge. When prosecutors leave, cases are reassigned, and he said that “causes at least substantial delay because a new attorney has to come up to speed.”

“It’s hard to overstate the impact of having assistants who are handling long-term investigations leave the office and have to hand it off to somebody else,” Safer said. “It results not only in justice being delayed, but at times in justice being denied.”

Boutros has praise for Amarjeet Bhachu, the ex-prosecutor seen as the driving force behind a massive corruption investigation that began in 2014. It led to the convictions of former powerhouse Ald. Edward M. Burke in 2023 and ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan in February 2025.

Bhachu left the U.S. attorney’s office the month after Madigan’s conviction, before Boutros took office.

Boutros is otherwise critical of the office he inherited, though. He points to “historic lows” in “virtually every single metric that was tracked by the Department of Justice.” Statistics kept by the federal courts show cases were brought against 428 people here in 2024, down from 848 in 2020.

That number rose to 598 in 2025, most noticeably with a 115% increase in fraud cases. Boutros has also touted a large increase in cases brought with help from the Crime Gun Intelligence Center run by the ATF.

Safer said such numbers “are largely misleading and irrelevant.” The FBI investigation that snared Burke and Madigan took several years and involved massive resources. The impact and significance of such a case is not reflected in the data.

“We need to be prosecuting organizations — as only the U.S. attorney’s office can do — who present a danger to the people of the Northern District of Illinois,” Safer said.

Boutros insists “you can do both.” He said an emphasis on “big cases” doesn’t explain the numbers he saw when he took over.

There are now 88 assistant U.S. attorneys on the criminal side of Boutros’ office in Chicago, and 25 on the civil side. There are 123 total, including in Rockford. But Boutros said his office is “on a major hiring spree,” with hopes of picking up “close to 50 new people” by the end of the year.

He said he’s had no trouble finding experienced applicants, contradicting the claim that Justice Department jobs have lost their luster.

Boutros focused on violent crime and corruption

There’s plenty of work for Chicago’s federal prosecutors to do beyond Midway Blitz. Boutros said his office is focused on fraud, human trafficking, child exploitation, violence, cartels, drugs, guns and gangs.

It leveled a terrorism charge in November against Lawrence Reed, the man accused of approaching a 26-year-old woman on a CTA Blue Line train, dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire.

And last week, it filed a weapons charge against Jose Medina, the Venezuelan immigrant separately accused of the March 19 murder of Gorman, the 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago freshman. Boutros said he was taking “no chances” that Medina might walk free.

There are other initiatives, too. Boutros announced last year that Project Safe Neighborhoods would expand to include “the entire rail system operated by the Chicago Transit Authority.” The program brings together federal, state and local law enforcement to identify pressing violent crime problems. It helped lead to the charges against Reed.

The ATF's Amon called Boutros a “relentless leader” who “cares deeply about his role in reducing violent crime” around Chicago.

Boutros created a health care fraud section and touts nearly $2 billion charged in such cases since taking office. His office has also been chosen as a “lead prosecutorial partner” on a Justice Department Trade Fraud Task Force, targeting people who evade federal customs laws.

He’s merged his office’s national security section with violent crimes — he says he can “surge resources into that unit as needed.” And he’s merged securities fraud with financial fraud.

Finally, there’s public corruption. Chicago’s U.S. attorney’s office has long been known for taking down some of the powerful politicians in this state, including governors, judges and lawmakers.

Turns out, Boutros said, “corruption has not stopped in Chicago.”

“Public corruption is a very special part of this office,” he said.

“And our work is not done.”