Federal prosecutors on Monday filed a motion to dismiss the case against David Huerta, the labor leader who was arrested during the first day of immigration raids that the Trump administration carried out across the Southland last summer.
In the court filing, prosecutors said “pursuant to an agreement of the parties,” they were moving to dismiss the indictment against Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West, who was detained by federal agents while documenting an immigration raid on June 6, 2025.
The government initially charged Huerta with a felony count of conspiracy to impede an officer, but downgraded it to a misdemeanor charge of “obstruction resistance or opposition of a federal officer.” He was set to go to trial next month.
At the time of his arrest, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in L.A., blasted Huerta’s photo on social media, stating, “Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted.”
It’s the latest protest case that has unraveled for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. Under Essayli, federal prosecutors have aggressively charged protesters with assaulting and impeding the actions of immigration agents, filing more than 100 cases.
According to data from June, prosecutors secured guilty pleas in 40 of those cases — but lost nearly every case that has gone to trial. Ten people have been acquitted at trial, two convicted. At least 29 people have had their cases dismissed.
“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,” Huerta’s attorneys, Abbe Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, said in a joint statement. “That is not how a justice system is supposed to work.”
In a statement, the U.S. attorney’s office maintained that the Department of Justice “does not arrest people for peacefully protesting” and said that since Huerta’s arrest he “has not engaged in the same obstructive behavior that led to his arrest and criminal charges being filed against him.”
“Mr. Huerta has agreed to accept responsibility for his actions,” the office said. “Pursuant to an agreement entered into with our office, if Mr. Huerta continues to comply with his pretrial release terms, we expect the criminal case against him to be fully dismissed by the end of next month.”
Huerta hailed the move for a dismissal as vindication he did nothing wrong.
“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. “There was never a real case, only an attempt to punish and silence me for exercising my constitutional rights.”
The case against Huerta centered on a workplace immigration raid at Ambiance Apparel. According to the criminal complaint, Huerta arrived at the site around noon. He and other protesters “appeared to be communicating with each other in a concerted effort to disrupt the law enforcement operations,” a federal agent wrote in the complaint.
Huerta was taunting and yelling at officers, according to the complaint, and later sat cross-legged in front of a vehicle gate to the location where law enforcement authorities were serving a search warrant.
Huerta “at various times stood up and paced in front of the gate, effectively preventing law enforcement vehicles from entering or exiting the premises through the gate to execute the search warrant,” the agent wrote in the affidavit. The agent wrote that they told Huerta that if he kept blocking the gate, he would be arrested.
According to the complaint, Huerta stood in the path of a law enforcement van trying to get through the gate. Because he “was being uncooperative, the officer put his hands on HUERTA in an attempt to move him out of the path of the vehicle.”
“I saw HUERTA push back, and in response, the officer pushed HUERTA to the ground,” the agent wrote. “The officer and I then handcuffed HUERTA and arrested him.”
Huerta was held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles for days, prompting thousands of union members, activists and supporters to rally for his release. California Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla sent a letter to the Homeland Security and Justice departments demanding a review of Huerta’s arrest.
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said she wasn’t surprised at the move to dismiss, as there “were problems with this case from day one.”
“When you look at the photos and videos, there’s certainly an argument from the defense that it was law enforcement acting in a defensive manner and he was just protesting,” Levenson said. “It would have been a tough case for the prosecution to win if this went to trial.”
Levenson added that the amount of dismissals and the office’s record on these cases, “signals that the government needs to step back and take a hard look at what they’re doing in bringing these cases.”
“I think they were very gung-ho on bringing these charges but then they realized that the public and the jurors didn’t see it the way they did,” Levenson said. “At the time people really wondered why the government was being so aggressive in their actions. Now [prosecutors] have to step back and say, ‘Maybe we didn’t make the right decisions’ or ‘We certainly don’t feel confident enough about them to take them to trial.’”
