Hundreds of Border Protection officers are on the streets of Chicago and the suburbs this week, with Commander Gregory Bovino back in the city.
Those officers have been making arrests all over the area, while some groups monitoring the deployment have alleged that federal agents are violating court orders amid the renewed enforcement push.
Footage shot by various groups showed an aerial escort from helicopters as federal agents moved around the city and suburbs Wednesday, making arrests in Evanston and at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
That stop in Evanston led to Mayor Daniel Biss, who is also running for Congress in Illinois’ 9th district, confronting Bovino.
For his part, Bovino thanked police in Evanston and Chicago, alleging that the departments protected federal agents from so-called “violent mobs.”
“I would like to thank both Chicago and Evanston Police Departments who provided assistance in preventing violent mobs from assaulting our law enforcement officers as we were conducting Title 8 immigration duties in the area,” he said on social media. “Both departments cleared the way for us to continue our enforcement efforts unimpeded.”
Biss told Bovino that he needed to leave town and that his actions were in violation of court orders.
”The only ‘violent mob’ in Evanston today was Greg Bovino and his masked thugs, terrorizing innocent people and then lying about our city to try and sow chaos,” he said on social media.
Civil rights attorney Mark Fleming, who is representing multiple detainees in the city, argues that federal agents are violating court orders and laws in the renewed crackdown.
“One of the tactics we see very often before and in these is where they surround people and have people, you know, with large, you know, high powered rifles forming a perimeter around individuals, or if an individual isn’t, you know, does not look the way they want them to. You know, running after them and arresting them before they’ve even asked any questions,” he said.
Fleming said that the federal government had agreed to cease warrantless arrests in the city and suburbs, but that they are violating that pledge this week.
“Is this the type of society we want to live in, where there’s dragnets, where there’s use of chemical munitions in neighborhoods in order to arrest who individuals who are long standing members of Chicago, who have families here, have built their lives here?,” he said.
Amid that backdrop, legal wrangling over whether President Donald Trump should be permitted to deploy National Guard members over the objections of state governors took another turn when a Washington, D.C. court ruled in the president’s favor within that city.
The question over whether the president can execute such orders in states remains before the Supreme Court, though the president extended the deployment for more than 300 members of the Illinois National Guard through mid-April despite the lack of a ruling in the case.
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