Gregory Bovino, the U.S. Border Patrol official who has led the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, returned to the Chicago area Tuesday morning with federal agents in tow, targeting immigrants on the city’s Southwest Side and western suburbs just over a month after their first mission 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 cans to try to block a Border Patrol caravan.
“All you’re doing in terrorizing us, scaring people. There’s little kids,” one person shouted at Bovino and other agents, blocks from where the arrest happened.
Other sightings on the Southwest Side and in Cicero were reported earlier Tuesday morning by rapid response teams that track and monitor immigration enforcement activity. Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, said agents had arrested another man who was biking near 26th Street and Kedvale Avenue around 9:30 a.m.
It’s unclear how long Bovino and his team will remain in the area, following relatively short stints in Charlotte, N.C., and New Orleans.
Bovino and his agents previously traveled to the Chicago area in September, weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration launched Operation Midway Blitz, the deportation campaign that has stoked fear among the city’s immigrant communities and led to thousands of arrests.
That mission was mired in controversy and driven by 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.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has insisted that immigration enforcement efforts aren’t winding down in the Chicago area.
“As we said a month ago, we aren’t leaving Chicago and operations are ongoing,” McLaughlin said in a 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 town in November saw federal immigration agents make some of their most high-profile arrests of the Midway Blitz operation, including the targeting of 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. In the meantime, 100 agents stayed behind, the source said.
U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia on Tuesday said his office was aware of “a large group of masked federal agents” arriving in Chicago. His office told the Sun-Times a “planeload” of agents had arrived to continue immigration enforcement.
Garcia, who represents Little Village, said the feds 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 intimate hardworking people,” Garcia said in a statement.