Federal Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino and agents said to be leaving Chicago, sources say

After two months of raids that netted thousands of arrests but also sparked outrage and resistance, a surge of federal immigration agents that came to the city as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz may soon leave Chicago as the controversial mission winds down, multiple law enforcement sources told the Tribune.

Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, the top official on the ground leading the Trump administration’s efforts, was expected to depart Chicago for another assignment within days, and most of the agents under this command would soon be redeployed elsewhere, three sources told the Tribune Monday morning.

An on-call task force composed of FBI and assistant U.S. attorneys is also expected to close up shop in the coming days, two of the sources said.

But the winding down of Operation Midway Blitz, which began in early September, does not mean that enhanced immigration enforcement will end anytime soon. The sources said the feds planned to leave in place a still-to-be-determined force of some Border Patrol agents as well as extra Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing the operation, did not confirm or deny the agency’s plans, saying: “every day DHS enforces the laws of this country, including in Chicago. We do not comment or telegraph future operations.”

Bovino did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him Monday and Tuesday. In a statement on X, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted, “We aren’t leaving Chicago,” but did not directly address the issue of Bovino’s departure.

CBS and CNN have both reported that Bovino will head to North Carolina next.

“If the reports are true, it could not have come soon enough,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters at an unrelated Veterans Day event at Soldier Field on Tuesday. He said Border Patrol agents are leaving behind “trails of tears and chaos” in their wake.

The mission officially began Sept. 8 in honor of Katie Abraham, who was killed in a drunk driving hit-and-run car wreck caused by an undocumented immigrant downstate. It started with an influx of ICE agents who were purportedly tasked with making targeted arrests of what the agency called the “worst of the worst,” or immigrants in the country without legal permission who had committed violent felony offenses.

President Donald Trump’s administration has touted the mission as a resounding success, highlighting convicted murderers, sex abusers and other violent criminals it says were able to avoid deportation due to Illinois’ sanctuary policies. At the two-month mark of the operation last week, DHS said agents had surpassed 3,000 total immigration arrests since the surge began.

“President Trump and DHS Secretary (Kristi) Noem have a clear message: No city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens,” the agency said in a statement on Nov. 5. “If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”

The reality on the ground, however, has never matched the administration’s narrative. Within days of the operation’s start, it was clear agents were making many “collateral arrests,” or arrests of people on the streets and in homes across the city and suburbs who had no warrants and were not the target of any law enforcement operation. Many had no criminal histories whatsoever, let alone convictions for violent crime.

Hundreds of those arrests are now being challenged in federal court, where a judge this week could order the release of many of the people on ankle monitors while it’s decided if their cases violated a 2018 consent decree limiting “warrantless” immigration arrests.

“The people of Chicago have deserved better than having CBP and Greg Bovino in this city,” said Gov. JB Pritzker after a Veterans Day event in Little Village on Tuesday. “But I would not say that we’re now going to be free of these terrorized neighborhoods, because ICE and CBP probably will still be here, though they will have fewer people, and we’ll have to continue to protect our neighbors and our friends and our families.”

In mid-September, the operation took an even more drastic turn with the arrival of Bovino, whose high-and-tight haircut and penchant for militaristic jargon quickly made him the face of the mission.

“Well, Chicago, we’ve arrived!” Bovino announced on social media on Sept. 16, in a highly produced video of Customs and Border Protection vehicles driving into the city and picturesque downtown shots. A week later, Bovino caused a stir by striking poses on a Border Patrol boat on the Chicago River, cruising past Trump Tower on a warm weekday afternoon surrounded by heavily armed agents in fatigues as a videographer filmed him and tourists gawked.

Once in Chicago, Bovino’s rotating crew of some 200 Border Patrol agents — who are trained to interdict migrants and drug smugglers along the nation’s borders, not conduct urban law enforcement — began infiltrating city neighborhoods in armed convoys and questioning and arresting people on the street, at bus stops, and near schools and Spanish-speaking businesses.

On Sept. 30, Bovino led a high-profile military-style raid on a large, dilapidated apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, including agents rappelling from Blackhawk helicopters, flash-bang grenades, doors busted off their hinges, and residents — including U.S. citizens — zip-tied and questioned.

Other controversies soon followed, as Bovino’s masked-up and heavily armed border agents filled multiple residential blocks with tear gas and other chemical munitions amid neighbors pushing back on their actions, shot U.S. citizens whom they claim “rammed” their vehicles, killed an undocumented man whom they alleged was trying to evade arrest, and left swaths of the city and suburbs blanketed in fear.

Bovino and his bosses at DHS repeatedly claimed that it was the agents who were being subjected to violence from “rioters” and gang members, some of whom allegedly threw rocks and bottles, tossed fireworks and boxed in agents trying to make lawful arrests.

But two Chicago federal judges found that those claims were either exaggerated or not credible. Last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis granted a preliminary injunction restricting the use of force, including tear gas and other chemical munitions, on protesters and the media, and requiring agents to wear body cameras and identification on their uniforms.

The Trump administration is appealing Ellis’ order, as well as a separate restraining order from U.S. District Judge April Perry that bars the president from deploying National Guard troops, which Trump said was necessary to quell the violence and allow immigration enforcement to continue.

Meanwhile, as Operation Midway Blitz winds down, the controversies continue unabated.

Over the weekend, Bovino and scores of federal agents engaged in a series of arrests and detainments in the Little Village neighborhood, and DHS officials said someone fired at agents. Many community members later in the day confronted the agents, touching off a chaotic series of confrontations. Bovino and federal officials were seen circling the neighborhood and deploying chemical crowd-control measures at several locations.

Local politicians later called the sweeps “a reign of terror” and declared that the agents who carried it out were “a new American gestapo.”

“At the end of the day, I think there’s a lot of trauma that’s been inflicted on the community,” Democratic state Sen. Celina Villanueva, who represents Little Village, said Tuesday at the same event where Pritzker spoke. “We have to talk about the real trauma that has been inflicted on behalf of the federal government, on communities, on residents and American citizens.”

A day earlier, Pritzker on social media blasted the Border Patrol after dozens of agents posed for a picture in front of the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park on Monday. Block Club Chicago reported that an agent shouted, “Everyone say, ‘Little Village!’” as an embedded photographer took the picture of the agents, many of whom were masked, and as snow covered the top of the Bean.

Pritzker posted that “making fun of our neighborhoods and communities is disgusting.”

“Greg Bovino and his masked agents are not here to make Chicago safer,” he wrote. “… they are posing for photo ops and producing reality TV moments.”

In response, Bovino — whom a federal judge declared had lied repeatedly in a deposition late last month — said Pritzker was “lying” and added, “feel free to join us in Little Village tomorrow.”

Chicago Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky, Alice Yin, Olivia Olander and Jeremy Gorner contributed.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com