Judge bans use of force for Trump’s Chicago blitz and accuses top border official of lying in court
Federal agents’ actions ‘shock the conscience,’ Judge Sara Ellis says
A federal judge is banning immigration authorities from firing tear gas and using other riot weapons during protests in Chicago after video evidence and courtroom testimony from protesters, reporters and faith leaders revealed behavior that “shocks the conscience.”
District Judge Sara Ellis also accused Greg Bovino — the top border patrol official for Trump’s mass deportation operations in Chicago — of lying in court about his officers’ behavior and his claim that protesters hit him in the head with a rock.
The government’s evidence in the case is “simply not credible,” Ellis said during a Thursday hearing, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“Describing neighborhood moms as professional agitators shows just how out of touch these agents are,” Ellis said of descriptions of protests in one Chicago neighborhood.
A lawsuit from protesters, press groups and faith leaders accused agents of indiscriminately firing tear gas and pepper balls into crowds and at close range, without warning, as volatile scenes emerged from protests against immigration raids across Chicago’s neighborhoods.
Bovino, the face of Trump’s boots-on-the-ground anti-immigration agenda, had testified that his officers’ behavior is “more than exemplary” after plaintiffs accused the Customs and Border Protection official and his team of violating a protective order “almost every day” since Ellis had issued it last month.
Federal agents “have violated it by using tear gas against civilians in residential neighborhoods of Chicago without any lawful basis for doing so,” including shooting chemical weapons at close range and pointing a gun at one demonstrator while saying “bang, bang” and “you’re dead, liberal,” according to plaintiffs.
Agents in Bovino’s command “went on a tour of Chicago neighborhoods, gassing residents in different neighborhoods each day” last month, they said.
They argued that officers are “inciting violence in peaceful residential neighborhoods to transform Chicago into the very ‘war zone’ that [administration officials] use to justify the deployment of more federal force.”
Protesters also allege masked agents tossed tear gas canisters while hanging out the window from the passenger seat of an unmarked SUV and “unleashed violence” the morning before a Halloween parade in a Chicago suburb, where agents allegedly tackled three people, including a 67-year-old U.S. citizen, before filling the streets with tear gas.
“The use of force shocks the conscience,” Ellis said Thursday. “The public has a strong interest in having a government that conducts itself fairly and in accordance with its own rules and policies.”
Her preliminary injunction will continue to block federal agents from using chemical sprays, tear gas, or other so-called less-lethal or riot control weapons unless officers give two warnings, and unless there is an imminent threat to one’s life.
All immigration agents — including Bovino — also must wear body-worn cameras, a provision that Ellis included in her earlier temporary order restricting how federal officers behave during protests.
Her latest order remains in effect until a final decision is reached in the lawsuit, or if the Trump administration successfully appeals.
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