Gregory Bovino, the U.S. Border Patrol official who has led the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, returned to the Chicago area Tuesday with federal agents in tow, targeting immigrants on the Southwest Side and in the west suburbs a month after their first efforts came to a chaotic end.
Bovino and his team were seen detaining a man near 27th Street and Ridgeway Avenue in Little Village around 10:20 a.m. Nearby, neighbors and activists shouted, blew whistles and set up trash bins to try to block a Border Patrol caravan.
“All you’re doing is terrorizing us, scaring people. There’s little kids,” one person shouted at Bovino and other agents, blocks from where the arrest happened.
Other sightings were reported earlier Tuesday by “rapid-response” teams that track and monitor immigration enforcement activity.
Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, said agents had arrested a man who was bicycling near 26th Street and Kedvale Avenue around 9:30 a.m. Another arrest was made at a Walmart in Cicero, video showed.
Bovino didn’t respond when a reporter asked for comment on a recent Sun-Times/WBEZ investigation that traced his family’s roots to Italy and later North Carolina, where his father killed a young woman in a drunken crash in 1981.
It’s unclear how long Bovino and his agents will remain in the Chicago area, after short stints in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New Orleans. Bovino on Tuesday told a Block Club Chicago reporter that he was joined by “several hundred” agents from Border Patrol and other agencies.
A ‘planeload’ of federal agents
Bovino and his agents previously traveled to the Chicago area in September, weeks after President Donald Trump launched Operation Midway Blitz, the deportation campaign that has stoked fear among Chicago’s immigrant communities and led to thousands of arrests.
That effort featured aggressive tactics, including car chases and the use of chemical munitions, takedowns and chokeholds.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis blasted the approach, restricted the use of force and ordered Bovino to appear before her for daily check-ins. An appellate court later put a hold on those restrictions and called off the daily meetings, and the plaintiffs in the underlying case moved to dismiss it after Bovino and his team left last month.
“As we said a month ago, we aren’t leaving Chicago, and operations are ongoing,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a written statement Tuesday. “Operation Midway Blitz is achieving what Chicago’s sanctuary politicians have refused to do for decades: decrease crime and remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who put the American people in danger.”
The final days before Bovino left Chicago in November saw immigration agents make some of their most high-profile arrests of the Chicago-area operation, which included targeting a day care teacher who was ultimately ordered released after her detention was deemed unlawful.
About 3,000 people were arrested in northern Illinois by either Border Patrol or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between June 11 and Oct. 22, the Justice Department has acknowledged in court.
The Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ reported last month that Bovino could return in March with 1,000 agents, according to a Homeland Security source, and that 100 agents stayed behind.
U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill., said Tuesday that his office was aware of “a large group of masked federal agents” arriving in Chicago. His staff said a “planeload” of agents had arrived to continue immigration enforcement.
Garcia, who represents Little Village, said the federal agents were deploying “tactics designed to maximize fear” by sending an influx of agents so close to the holidays.
“At a time when families should be celebrating the holidays in safety and peace, these agents are instead carrying out operations to separate families, sow panic and intimidate hardworking people,” Garcia said in a statement.
Community stands up
Gov. JB Pritzker said his office wasn’t given a heads-up about the return of Bovino and the additional agents. He said it appeared they’d be in the area “at least a couple of days, if not longer.”
“They seem to already be deploying again with masks and unmarked cars and SUVs into neighborhoods,” Pritzker said. “They call it enforcement. We call it harassment.”
Pritzker said people around Chicago are in a better position to respond to the increased federal presence after the first round with Bovino. Legislation Pritzker signed last week aims to bar civil immigration arrests from being carried out in courts, day care centers and hospitals and public universities, and the new law gives people more leeway to sue agents accused of violating their civil rights.
His administration also formed the Illinois Accountability Commission to give people an avenue to report abuses. The commission will meet for the first time Thursday.
“I’m very proud of the way that Illinoisans have reacted to CBP and ICE, and that’s in pulling out your whistles and your phones, video [recording] everything and posting it online,” Pritzker said. “We have a population that knows how to react when their community is being invaded, and we’ve seen people step up.”
At 32nd and Ridgeway, some community members used three trash bins to block a Border Patrol caravan Tuesday morning. But the lead SUV plowed right through them.
Patricia Villanueva, longtime owner of the corner grocery La Burbuja, was finishing up with a beverage delivery truck when she heard the commotion. She locked up her store until the caravan had left.
Hours later, after she’d reopened, Villanueva said business was slow because many of her customers were afraid to leave their homes.
Villanueva said it’s brave for “rapid response” volunteers to follow federal agents, warn about their presence, record them and demand judicial warrants. But Villanueva said she doesn’t like jeering that could provoke the agents “to make a bad decision” to use their weapons.
“It’s dangerous and that could lead to a tragedy,” Villanueva said in Spanish. “We have to use our intelligence.”
Contributing: Ashlee Rezin