In the days following a marked escalation in the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” mass deportation campaign in early October — including the shooting of a U.S. citizen by a federal immigration agent and the National Guard’s deployment to Chicago — a panel of grand jurors gathered once again behind closed doors in the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.That particular group was nearing the end of its 18-month grand jury service, which began in June 2024, and had so far spent hundreds of hours hearing evidence brought by various federal prosecutors and signing off on indictments. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, a near two-decade veteran of the Department of Justice, had appeared in front of that grand jury enough times to develop a sort of bond with the group.That bond, she told the grand jurors on Oct. 9, 2025, led her to ask her superiors if she could wait to present “a very interesting case” to them.
“I said I want to go in front of the Thursday grand jury because I know you and I trust you, and you know me and you trust me, and I would never ask you to charge somebody if I didn’t think there was probable cause,” Mecklenburg told the grand jury. “And you know you’ve asked me before, ‘Well, what about this person?’ And I said, ‘I don’t charge people unless I’m absolutely sure.’”
