CHICAGO — A federal judge in Chicago on Monday grilled U.S. immigration officials about federal agents’ use of tear gas and other forceful tactics against protesters as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown in the city.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis has repeatedly expressed concern that federal agents were violating her October 9 order requiring them to wear visible identification and limiting their use of anti-riot weapons such as pepper balls and tear gas. On Friday, Ellis ordered federal officers who have body cameras to turn them on while conducting immigration enforcement activity and during interactions with the public.
At Monday’s hearing, Ellis also said she would allow the plaintiffs in the case — protesters, journalists and clergy members who sued the Trump administration alleging they were deliberately brutalized during peaceful demonstrations — to question several officials under oath, including Gregory Bovino, a top U.S. Border Patrol official.
In granting the plaintiffs’ request, Ellis made it clear the litigation is limited to the tactics used by field agents, not the president’s stated rationale.
“I don’t think that it matters what the administration’s objectives are or what goals they have or what ideology is pushing this enforcement action,” she said. “This lawsuit…is all about how our ICE officials and CBP officials are enforcing the laws.”
Clashes between protesters and federal agents, particularly Border Patrol agents and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, have increased since Trump launched the crackdown in early September.
Trump also ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to the Chicago area, part of the Republican president’s extraordinary campaign to send military personnel to Democratic-run cities purportedly to fight crime. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the deployment, but the Justice Department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the troops to proceed.
Separately, a federal appeals court on Monday cleared the way for hundreds of Guard soldiers to deploy to Portland, Oregon, despite the objections of the Democratic mayor and governor there.
At Monday’s hearing, Ellis asked Kyle Harvick, a deputy incident commander for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, about several hostile interactions between agents and city residents, including a reported confrontation over the weekend in which a law enforcement officer pointed a gun at a group of bystanders outside an ice cream shop.
“You could understand how I might be concerned, right?” Ellis said. “That might be a use of force that is not commensurate with any threat that the agents are getting from people passing by.”
Harvick said he did not have details regarding that incident, but defended the actions of agents during other instances, including the use of tear gas to disperse protesters.
Shawn Byers, deputy field office director for ICE, told Ellis that 75 people had been arrested for either obstructing or assaulting federal officers.
He also said he was unaware of any intentional targeting of journalists, adding that some people at protests had claimed to be journalists but did not have press credentials. The police department in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb where many of the protests have taken place at an ICE facility, reported that ICE agents fired pepper balls at a CBS reporter’s vehicle.
Trump has justified his Chicago crackdown by arguing the city is plagued by violence. The city’s murder rate has been significantly declining for several years, although it remains higher than other large U.S. cities.