NEWS FLASH
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— A federal judge just put the Trump administration’s immigration chief in Chicago on a nightly leash.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ordered Greg Bovino — the public face of the administration’s city-by-city immigration sweeps — to brief her in person every day at 6 p.m., reporting how his agents are enforcing the law and whether they’re staying within constitutional bounds. To every request, Bovino answered: “Yes, ma’am.”
The crackdown has netted over 1,800 arrests since September. But it was the images that drove the judge’s order — especially what happened over the weekend, when Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade on the Northwest Side with tear gas. Neighbors had gathered in the street as someone was arrested.
“Those kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “I can only imagine how terrified they were. These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday.”
Ellis also demanded every use-of-force report since Sept. 2 from agents in Operation Midway Blitz — originally by the end of Tuesday, but Bovino told the court that would be “physically impossible” because of the “sheer amount.” He also faces a Friday deadline to get a body camera and complete training, after the judge required cameras when tear gas raised concerns agents weren’t following her orders. Attorneys for news outlets and protesters claim he violated her use-of-force order in Little Village, filing an image of him allegedly throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.
“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress,” Ellis said. “My role is simply to see that in the enforcement of those laws, the agents are acting in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”
She predicted the new oversight would work: “I suspect that now knowing where we are and that he understands what I expect, I don’t know that we’re going to see a whole lot of tear gas deployed in the next week.”
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this standoff unfolds.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
