Judge orders daily meetings with Border Patrol official Bovino on Chicago immigration crackdown

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CHICAGO (AP) — A judge in Chicago took the rare step Tuesday of ordering a senior U.S. Border Patrol official to brief her every night, an unprecedented bid to impose real-time oversight on the government’s immigration crackdown in the city after weeks of tense encounters and tear gas thrown by officers.

Greg Bovino, who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s city-by-city immigration sweeps, must sit for a daily 6 p.m. briefing to report how his agents are enforcing the law and whether they are staying within constitutional bounds, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said.

Ellis also demanded full use-of-force reports from agents involved in a blitz that has netted over 1,800 arrests since September.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bovino responded to each request.

He got an earful from Ellis as soon as he settled into the witness chair in his green uniform.

The judge quickly expressed concerns about video and other images from the campaign against illegal immigration. The hearing was the latest in a lawsuit by news outlets and protesters who say agents have used too much force, including tear gas, during demonstrations.

“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress. … 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,” Ellis said.

Bovino is chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, one of nine on the Mexican border.

The judge wants him to meet her in person daily “to hear about how the day went.”

“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,” Ellis said.

Ellis zeroed in on reports that Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade with tear gas on the city’s Northwest Side over the weekend. 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. “And I can only imagine how terrified they were. These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.”

Ellis ordered Bovino to produce all use-of-force reports since Sept. 2 from agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz. She first demanded them by the end of Tuesday, but Bovino said it would be “physically impossible” because of the “sheer amount.”

Lawyers for the government have repeatedly defended the actions of agents, including those from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and told the judge that videos and other portrayals have been one-sided.

Besides his court appearance, Bovino still must sit for a deposition, an interview in private, with lawyers from both sides.

The judge has already ordered agents to wear badges, and she’s banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She subsequently required body cameras after the use of tear gas raised concerns that agents were not following her initial order.

Ellis set a Friday deadline for Bovino to get a camera and to complete training.

Attorneys representing a coalition of news outlets and protesters claim he violated the judge's use-of-force order in Little Village, a Mexican enclave in Chicago, and they filed an image of him allegedly “throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.”

Over the weekend, masked agents and unmarked SUVs were seen on Chicago’s wealthier, predominantly white North Side, where video showed chemical agents deployed in a street. Agents have been recorded using tear gas several times over the past few weeks.

Bovino also led the immigration operation in Los Angeles in recent months, leading to thousands of arrests. Agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and patrolled MacArthur Park on horseback.