A top California labor leader who was tackled and arrested June 6 while protesting an immigration raid had his charges reduced Oct. 17 from felony to misdemeanor.
David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU)’s 45,000-member statewide local United Service Workers West, was protesting June 6 outside a Los Angeles garment warehouse where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were conducting a raid when a a masked man in a police vest shoved him to the ground. After he was arrested SEIU organized rallies demanding his release in over a dozen cities; he was released after three days on a $50,000 bond.
The charge was “conspiracy to impede an officer,” a felony punishable by up to six years in federal prison. Huerta had briefly blocked a vehicle, according to the federal prosecuting attorney. The charge is now “obstruction, resistance or opposition to a federal officer,” a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison.
“In the four months that have passed since David’s arrest, it has become even clearer there were no grounds for charging him and certainly none for the way he was treated,” said Huerta’s attorneys in a press statement. “This case is not a good-faith pursuit of justice but a bald act of retaliation, designed to silence dissent and punish opposition.”
