Border patrol leader told to go to court every weekday to report on Chicago enforcement | US immigration

A federal judge has ordered Gregory Bovino, the top Border Patrol official who led the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants in Chicago, to appear in federal court every weekday to report on that day’s events in an exceptional bid to impose oversight over the government’s militarized raids in the city.

The decision came after a brief hearing Tuesday morning.

“Children parading in Halloween costumes do not pose a direct threat to the safety of law enforcement,” U.S. district judge Sara Ellis told Bovino. “They don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.”

Ellis was referring to an incident with federal agents over the weekend. deployed chemical irritants against residents, including one neighborhood where dozens of children planned to march in a Halloween parade.

Today’s order is the latest in several attempts to maintain oversight over Bovino and his agents, who have been seen repeatedly violating court orders to prevent their use of force amid an intense militarized immigration crackdown in Chicago. The administration dubbed the move in Chicago “Operation Midway Blitz,” and the operation has resulted in the arrests of at least 3,000 people since September.

The use of force by federal agents in Chicago came before Ellis for the first time after media outlets, protesters and clergy filed a lawsuit accusing agents of “extreme brutality” in an attempt to “silence the press and civilians.” He instructed agents to refrain from using tear gas on crowds without first giving two warnings.

Agents over and over again deployed pepper balls, smoke bombs and tear gas against protesters and local police Despite the order, Ellis ordered the agents to wear body cameras. He told Bovino at Tuesday’s hearing that he must personally obtain a body camera and complete training on the use of the body camera by Friday.

Appearing in his green suit with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) emblem, Bovino agreed to each request, responding: “Yes, sir.”

“My job is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce laws validly passed by Congress. My job is only to see that representatives act constitutionally in enforcing those laws,” Ellis said.

Bovino, the border patrol chief in El Centro, Calif., along the U.S.-Mexico border, has become the face of Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, agents broke car windows and blew out the door of a house while a woman and her two young children were inside. Immigration advocates and lawyers have expressed concern about border patrol agents flooding U.S. cities because they are not trained to thwart illegal entries at the nation’s borders, deter drug smugglers and human traffickers, and enforce civil immigration enforcement in urban communities.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes CBP, did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Ellis’ latest order.

At hearings, federal officials said they used riot control equipment and tear gas in response to threats. They did not provide evidence that these were valid threats.

Ellis questioned Bovino’s use of tear gas after he was captured on video throwing a canister of tear gas at a group of residents of Little Village, a largely immigrant and Mexican-American community on the city’s Southwest Side.

He also questioned his agents’ use of force in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, which he described as “a pretty quiet neighborhood.” [with] “lots of families, lots of detached houses.”

“As you can imagine, these children’s sense of security was shattered on Saturday,” he said. “And if it comes back, it’s going to be a long time coming back.”