Following a month-long court battle that featured appearances by top federal officials and an appeals court’s rebuke, a high-stakes hearing is underway over the treatment of protesters and journalists amid the feds’ aggressive deportation campaign in Chicago.
Plaintiff’s attorney Craig Futterman began by arguing federal agents are targeting “ordinary people who have the courage to observe, document, speak out against what defendants are doing.”
Department of Justice lawyer Sarmad Khojasteh countered by asking, “to what extent does the freedom of speech protect individuals in obstructing and/or threatening conduct — throwing rocks, bottles fireworks, surrounding and pinning down law enforcement officials?”
The first witness to take the stand was Father Brendan Curran who testified that when he visited the Broadview facility in September it was “heartbreaking … to see an utterly militarized zone” with the “windows boarded up.”
When Khojasteh challenged whether Curran actually saw people being shot with gas, Curran replied, “I observed federal agents launching projectiles from the corner of the roof at the people who were not armed and not violent in any way.”
The next witness before U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis was Emily Steelhammer, executive director of the Chicago Newspaper Guild. She says she’s spoken with “at least 15” guild members, who say they’ve been “hit with rubber bullets, pepper balls, different projectiles, they have experienced the effects of chemical weapons.”
After that 12th Ward Ald. Julia Ramirez took the stand and testified about an October incident in Brighton Park, which is in part of her ward, that led to angry protests.
Ramirez said that an agent came “flying down in his vehicle” toward protesters, trying to get them to move, and then people were “hit by pepper ball sprays.”
Ramirez says no one asked the protesters to move, no dispersal order was given, and no one attacked agents.
Ramirez says an “armored vehicle” that “looked very much like a tank” arrived with an agent “on top of that vehicle pointing their gun down at the community.”
“I couldn’t even believe I was living that,” she said.
The DOJ’s Khojasteh then cross-examined Ramirez, asking, “you oppose the administration’s enforcement efforts in Chicago?”
Ramirez responded, “Generally, I would say yes.”
Judge Ellis followed up by asking Ramirez, “You didn’t observe people around you being violent toward any of the agents?”
“That’s correct,” Ramirez replied, and assured the judge that her opinion of immigration enforcement did not affect her answers.
A series of witnesses then testified about other aggressive encounters with federal agents around the city.
That included Leslie Cortez, an organizer for an environmental justice organization, who was present at a Home Depot in early October where day laborers were being arrested.
Cortez testified that she tried to tell them their rights in Spanish while filming, and agents told her “they already know their rights.”
Cortez said an agent wound up drawing a weapon and pointing it at her. “They aimed it right at me, because I could see inside the barrel.”
“My heart accelerated,” she added. “I was nervous they were going to shoot. I froze.”
She was followed by John Bodett, who took a video of U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino Oct. 23 when Bovino allegedly threw tear gas without justification in Little Village.
After lawyers played the video in court, Ellis asked Bodett, “you didn’t hear an order to leave, and you didn’t hear a warning that a projectile, which turned out to be tear gas, was being used?”
Bodett replied, “Correct.”
But under questioning by Khojasteh, Bodett acknowledged “I’m not the person standing in front of commander Bovino.”
The next witness, Jo-Elle Munchak of Edgewater, video-recorded the detention of landscapers on Oct. 10, part of which lawyers also played in court.
In the video, Munchak is heard yelling, “It’s almost like they’re stormtroopers or something! … Smile nice, boys, for the Hague!”
Munchak testified that she left the scene but was followed and blocked in by agents in SUVs. She said they “rushed my car … and then an agent was in front of my car aiming a gun at my head.”
The DOJ’s Khojasteh referenced the “stormtrooper” comment and asked Munchak if federal agents are “akin to war criminals?”
Munchak responded that their methods are “cruel” and “draconian” and “step over the line.”
She then added she was thinking about “Star Wars” when she mentioned “stormtroopers.”
The hearing is the culmination of the legal back-and-forth that prompted last week’s appearance at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse by U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, as well as a deposition he’s had to sit for over the feds’ controversial tactics.
The preliminary injunction hearing Wednesday could also trigger an appeal by the Trump administration. That would take the case back to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which last week accused U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis of infringing on the separation of powers by trying to force Bovino into her courtroom every weeknight over seven days.
Ellis presides over a lawsuit brought by media organizations, including the Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Newspaper Guild, which represents journalists at the Chicago Sun-Times. Along the way, she entered a temporary restraining order forbidding agents from using tear gas and other “riot control weapons” against people who pose no immediate threat, and without two warnings.
She made national headlines while seeking to enforce that order. Now lawyers are seeking an order that would restrict the feds’ tactics on a long-term basis.
It’s yet another pivotal hearing at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, where lawyers have also recently tangled over the deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois by President Donald Trump and conditions within Broadview’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
Ellis has been deluged with claims that the feds have violated her temporary restraining order, including an allegation that Bovino personally tossed tear gas into a crowd in Little Village without justification.
Though the appeals court put a stop to Bovino’s daily check-ins with the judge, she still forced him to sit for a five-hour deposition in which plaintiffs’ lawyers were allowed to ask how agents have gone about enforcing federal immigration law here.
A transcript of Bovino’s under-oath deposition, taken behind closed doors, has not yet been made public. But a court hearing last week revealed that he’d been asked about communications with deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
And in a separate filing released late Monday, plantiffs’ lawyers said that Bovino’s deposition included an admission that he had instructed officers to “go hard” and arrest protesters “who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Steven Art told Ellis they plan to play portions of Bovino’s testimony during Wednesday’s hearing because of the importance for “everybody involved to see how incredible some of that testimony has been.” He said they also intend to call 13 witnesses and present body-worn camera footage, media interviews Bovino and Noem have done, among other exhibits.
That came during a hearing Tuesday in which Trump administration lawyers asked Ellis to not allow witnesses or new evidence to be presented during Wednesday’s hearing, insisting that a ruling could be made based on the evidence already submitted.
DOJ lawyers did not have a prepared list of witnesses to call Wednesday, prompting Ellis to ask them to present a list by Tuesday night. The judge then asked them to indicate which body-worn camera footage they deemed necessary to file under seal with an explanation.
On Wednesday Ellis is also expected to address extending her temporary restraining order through Nov. 19.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers have argued that the feds’ “use of chemical agents, physical violence, and unwarranted dispersal orders against nonviolent protesters and observers is clearly excessive in relation to the government interest in ensuring the execution of its laws.”
“When [federal agents] are faced with a crowd of nonviolent protesters registering their disagreement with Operation Midway Blitz, federal agents routinely respond with excessive and indiscriminate use of chemical and impact munitions, arrests, and violence,” they added.
The lawyers have also complained about agents’ use of tear gas in Old Irving Park as children were on their way to a Halloween parade, and how the Rev. David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago was shot in his head with a pepper ball outside ICE’s facility in Broadview.
Ellis already heard from two federal officials aside from Bovino, including one who insisted that Black “was given multiple commands” that he didn’t follow.
Justice Department attorneys have promised the judge that “the record will ultimately show that the gas is being used to enable agents to meet safely in highly volatile situations.”
“The success of the operation has come with enormous risk to federal law enforcement and repeated violent attacks against them,” they wrote in a recent court filing. “Initially these attacks occurred at or around the Broadview facility, but more violence has occurred as federal law enforcement officers … have engaged in immigration enforcement in Chicago and the surrounding area.
“Law enforcement personnel face threats every day they engage in enforcement of immigration laws,” they added. “Cartels and at least one gang in Chicago have placed bounties for the murder of immigration officers and many officers have been doxxed with their addresses posted on social media or their photos taken as they operate in the field.”
Federal prosecutors in Chicago have charged a man with placing a $10,000 bounty on Bovino’s head, but the man’s defense attorney says he is no gang member and the feds won’t be able to prove him guilty at trial.
Both reporters are represented by the Newspaper Guild, and one was questioned as part of the lawsuit described in this article.