CHICAGO — One of the only felony convictions secured by federal prosecutors in Operation Midway Blitz now appears to be under threat as a scandal over alleged grand jury misconduct continues to swirl around the U.S. attorney’s office.

Anthony Gonzalez Alvarez, 27, of Lyons, pleaded guilty in April to a felony charge stemming from a traffic altercation with Border Patrol agents in Brighton Park in October.

His sentencing had been scheduled for July 22. On Thursday, however, prosecutors filed a cryptic motion asking for the sentencing to be stayed as “the parties are in the process of evaluating a potential legal issue” with the charge to which Alvarez pleaded guilty.

The motion stated that the U.S. attorney’s office “has re-offered” Alvarez a plea agreement that would resolve the case as a misdemeanor — which could allow him to avoid any prison time.

Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt to schedule a status hearing in late July or early August.

Alvarez’s attorney, Rick Meza, had no immediate comment Thursday. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

To have a felony conviction unravel after a defendant pleads guilty is a rare occurrence at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. But Alvarez’s case has an even more interesting wrinkle.

Court records show Alvarez was indicted on Oct. 23 by the same grand jury that had also returned an indictment that same day in the “Broadview Six” case, which later collapsed amid allegations of wrongdoing by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg.

Alvarez’s indictment was not handled by Mecklenburg, according to court records. However, the case was heard on the day that U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros himself made a highly unusual appearance before the grand jury, giving a pep talk about their civic duties after word had reached the front office about rancor over the Broadview Six case.

Transcripts of the proceedings released by the U.S. attorney’s office showed Boutros introduced himself as the U.S. attorney, and told the panel they had an important “constitutional” function to play in the judicial system.

He also said “setting aside your emotions, setting aside your personal views, beliefs and biases” was very important, according to the transcript.

“And just simply as I like to say, calling balls and strikes,” Boutros said. “You’re the umpire and you can’t come in and be an umpire in favor of (a) particular team. You gotta call balls and strikes and that’s all we ask. But we also recognize that these are trying times, these are emotional times. You can’t help but turn on the news, read the newspapers, or for those of you who use TikTok and Instagram, and there’s stuff in there all the time.”

Boutros then said that if anyone was “struggling with a certain type of cases, such as the immigration cases” where they did not believe they could be objective, “I would ask that you raise your hand and identify yourself, because we have a different procedure for that.”

“Fairness is the key to the operation of our system,” Boutros continued, according to the transcript. “So is there anyone here who thinks that he or she cannot be fair, cannot be open-minded, cannot receive evidence, cannot set aside their personal feelings on any case, immigration or otherwise, child exploitation, immigration, whatever it is. Anyone who thinks they can’t do it, please raise your hand.”

According to the transcript, no one raised their hand, and after a few more general remarks, Boutros left the room.

Later that day, the grand jury returned the Broadview Six indictment alleging a group of protesters, most with ties to local Democratic politics, conspired to damage and impede an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s vehicle at a suburban ICE processing facility on Sept. 26, court records show.

The panel also issued a perfunctory, one-paragraph indictment against Alvarez accusing him of forcibly impeding an immigration agent on Oct. 3, court records show.

According to Alvarez’s plea agreement, three U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents were part of a patrol in Brighton Park at about 10:30 a.m. when Alvarez, driving a black Ford F-250 pickup truck joined a caravan that had been following agents’ vehicles.

As the caravan turned right from 61st Street to go south on Kedzie Avenue, Alvarez drove his truck into the rear passenger side of the agents’ vehicle, causing about $1,300 in damage, according to the plea agreement.

The criminal complaint originally filed against Alvarez in October alleged that he continued following the agents after the collision but sped off after they shot pepper balls at his truck.

About an hour later, law enforcement located the black Ford pickup parked in an alley behind a residence in the West Lawn neighborhood, according to the complaint. As agents conducted surveillance, they saw him leave a residence and drive away “at a high rate of speed,” the complaint alleged.

“Law enforcement followed Alvarez and activated their emergency lights to effect a traffic stop,” the complaint alleged. “The Ford pick-up did not stop and began driving erratically, including driving through a fence.”

At that point, officers discontinued the pursuit “out of concern for civilian safety,” the complaint alleged.

Alvarez wound up pleading guilty to a superseding criminal information containing a single charge of “misprison” of a felony for calling Chicago police and falsely reporting his truck had been stolen the morning of the incident. The charge carries up to three years in prison.

He was one of only two people to be convicted so far out of nearly three dozen to face federal charges involving the Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s two-month deportation campaign last fall that sparked protests across the region and near-daily clashes between residents and immigration agents.

As of Thursday, charges were pending against two other defendants. Some 24 people have been cleared, either through a grand jury refusing to indict, the dismissal of charges by prosecutors, or, in the one case that went to trial, a not guilty verdict by a jury.

The U.S. attorney’s office has entered into deferred prosecution agreements with three others that are on track to end without a criminal conviction.

By far the most controversial case has been the Broadview Six, which disintegrated days before trial last month when U.S. District Judge April Perry read unredacted grand jury transcripts in that case and saw what she described as “shocking” misconduct by the prosecutor on the case.

Defense attorneys have since called for special counsel to be appointed to investigate who in the U.S. attorneys office was responsible for trying to hide the misconduct from the judge and potentially pursue contempt of court charges.

As the office has gone into damage control, Boutros said he’s ordered a top-to-bottom review of 20 years worth of Mecklenburg’s appearances before other grand juries, and his office has already agreed to turn over transcripts of those proceedings to defense attorneys in half a dozen cases.

The latest came Thursday, when U.S. District Judge Manish Shah approved a plan to produce grand jury materials in the case against David Izsak, who is serving a five-year sentence for bank fraud in a multimillion-dollar mortgage and loan fraud scheme that included the fraudulent purchase of a 58-foot party yacht known as the “Flying Lady.”

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