A New York Times investigation by Danny Hakim, published July 19, 2026, reports that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois has been destabilized by the aftermath of last fall’s federal immigration operation in Chicago, known as Operation Midway Blitz. According to the Times, the office filed assault charges under a rarely used federal statute against 62 people — protesters and immigrants alike — and nearly all of them fell apart: 59 were dropped or thrown out, one produced a guilty plea, none produced a trial conviction, and two remain open. That roughly 2 percent success rate stands against a Justice Department average above 90 percent.

The article ties the case collapse to an exodus of staff. Every section chief in the criminal division departed over the past year, along with many of their replacements, and more than 100 former prosecutors from the office signed a letter faulting U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros for damaging its reputation. Former prosecutors told the Times that colleagues felt pressured into bringing charges they viewed as unfounded. Boutros also dissolved the office’s standalone national security section and drew a judge’s rebuke over the handling of a protester prosecution he ultimately moved to dismiss.

The Times reports that Boutros has attributed the turmoil to retirements, a hiring freeze, and prior mismanagement, and says he is reforming the office; the acting attorney general has publicly backed him, while Illinois’s two senators have called for his resignation. A Justice Department spokesman defended the department’s approach to assault cases, and the former Border Patrol official who ran Midway Blitz argued in the opposite direction — that the office had been too reluctant to charge.

Read it here.