- Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino to report to court every weekday evening amid alleged abuses in Chicago sweeps.
- Operation Midway Blitz arrested 3,000+ people but faces lawsuits for tear-gassing kids, excessive force, and racial profiling.
- New rules demand transparency: bodycams, warnings before gas, and daily use-of-force reports; operation’s future now tied to court scrutiny.
CHICAGO — In a rare move that’s drawing sharp criticism from both sides of the immigration debate, a federal judge here has ordered the top U.S. Border Patrol official overseeing President Trump’s aggressive deportation sweeps in the city to show up in her courtroom every weekday evening.
The directive, issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, comes amid a flurry of complaints about agents deploying tear gas on protesters, bystanders, and even children at a Halloween parade, raising fresh questions about the tactics fueling the administration’s interior enforcement push.
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Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol’s commander-at-large and the public face of “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, was hauled into the Dirksen Federal Courthouse for a tense 90-minute hearing.
Dressed in his signature dark green uniform, the 29-year agency veteran faced a barrage of questions from Ellis about videos and reports showing his 200-plus agents firing chemical agents across neighborhoods like Little Village, Old Irving Park, and Lakeview.
The operation, which kicked off in September, has netted more than 3,000 arrests, according to the Department of Homeland Security, but it’s also sparked lawsuits alleging excessive force and racial profiling.
Ellis didn’t mince words as she grilled Bovino on the stand. “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat,” she said, referencing footage from October 25 in the Old Irving Park district, where agents unleashed tear gas on families heading to a children’s event.
One particularly harrowing incident involved a 67-year-old U.S. citizen, a member of a local running club, who was allegedly yanked from his car, kneed in the back, and left with six broken ribs and internal bleeding. “It’s difficult to see that the force being used is necessary,” Ellis added, underscoring her frustration with what she called repeated breaches of a temporary restraining order she issued earlier this month.
The judge’s new rules are straightforward but stringent: Bovino must report in person at 6 p.m. each weekday until a preliminary injunction hearing on November 5, briefing her on the day’s arrests, confrontations, and any use of force.
By Friday, his team has to cough up all use-of-force reports and body-camera footage from September 2 through October 25.
Agents are barred from targeting journalists—”If they’re doing their job, they need to be left alone to do their job,” Ellis ruled—and must issue two warnings before deploying riot-control weapons like tear gas, while wearing visible IDs and switched-on cameras at all times.
Bovino himself admitted he wasn’t wearing one, prompting Ellis to order him to get fitted for a body cam and trained on it by the end of the week. “I believe the vast—99% do,” he told her when asked about his agents’ compliance.
A Pattern of Troubled History
Bovino, who cut his teeth patrolling the El Centro sector along the California-Mexico border since joining the agency in 1996, has been at the helm of these urban sweeps since September, after a brief stint in Los Angeles.
He’s no stranger to controversy. Back in January, a federal judge in Kern County, California, slammed a similar raid he led as likely unconstitutional, after documents revealed 77 of 78 arrests targeted people with no prior immigration records—contradicting Bovino’s public claims at the time.
That operation led to retraining mandates for his agents and an injunction blocking future sweeps in California’s Central Valley. Now, with Chicago’s “Midway Blitz” echoing those tactics—visible patrols by boat along the Chicago River, sweeps through downtown and immigrant-heavy neighborhoods—critics say history is repeating itself.
The hearing wasn’t just about one rogue incident. Videos submitted to the court showed Bovino himself hurling a tear gas canister into a crowd in Little Village on October 23, after agents arrested a security guard in a mall parking lot.
DHS lawyers defended it, saying he was responding to a rock thrown by a protester that struck him, but plaintiffs in the lawsuit—a coalition of immigrant rights groups and affected residents—disputed that account, calling it a clear violation of Ellis’s order.
Outside the courthouse, a small but vocal group of protesters waved signs reading “Stop ICE Brutality” and “Judge Sara Ellis is a Boss,” heckling Bovino as he exited flanked by two dozen agents in tactical gear.
He pumped his fist and saluted supporters cheering the crackdown, but inside, he offered little pushback, agreeing to the daily check-ins without protest.
People Want ICE Off the Streets
This isn’t an isolated flare-up in the Trump administration’s immigration strategy. Just days before the hearing, on October 27, NBC News reported that DHS is plotting a broader shake-up at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aiming to swap out some regional ICE leaders with Border Patrol hardliners like Bovino to ramp up arrest numbers.
Frustrated with what insiders call lagging deportation paces, the plan taps more than 1,500 Border Patrol agents for interior duties—agents trained for border interdictions, not urban crowd control.
“There are concerns about potentially replacing some ICE leadership with Border Patrol officials,” the report noted, highlighting the functional differences between the agencies.
In Chicago alone, Bovino’s team has clashed with locals in at least a dozen high-profile standoffs since September, from the Gold Coast to the East Side, often drawing crowds of onlookers and media.
Legal experts are split on Ellis’s approach. ABC7 Chicago’s chief legal analyst Gil Soffer called the daily appearances “most certainly unusual” but “almost certainly within her powers,” given the judge’s role in enforcing her own restraining order.
Conservative voices, however, see overreach. The Washington Examiner cited experts warning that the order could invite a Justice Department petition for a writ of mandamus—an appeals court intervention to curb what they call judicial meddling in executive operations.
Immigration advocates, meanwhile, applaud the scrutiny. “Border Patrol agents are flooding U.S. cities, trained for borders, not civil enforcement in communities,” The Guardian quoted lawyers saying, pointing to fears of racial profiling in Latino-heavy areas like Little Village.
What Happens Next?
As Bovino gears up for his first 6 p.m. check-in Wednesday, the stakes feel higher than ever.
Ellis made it clear: If tear gas flies again, “they’d better be able to back it up.”
With smartphones capturing every canister lobbed and every arrest gone wrong, the operation’s future—and Bovino’s legacy—hangs in the balance.
For now, Chicago’s streets are a testing ground for how far the administration’s “America First” enforcement can go before the courts pull the reins.
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
