U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino said federal agents’ operations had been “going very violent” the same day that his agents fired pepper balls at a moving vehicle in Gage Park and pointed rifles in Little Village as residents blew whistles, screamed at passing federal cars and followed their large convoy around the city’s Southwest Side.
“We can operate with great skill, legally, ethically and morally,” Bovino said during a brief stop in Gage Park.
That statement came the same day a federal judge said that agents’ actions “shocked the conscience” and declared that Bovino, the top official on the ground in “Operation Midway Blitz,” had repeatedly lied in his deposition about whether he had used force against people protesting the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis made those statements while issuing a sweeping prohibition on agents’ use of chemical crowd controls against civilians.
Bovino spoke to a Tribune photographer around 1 p.m. inside a Gage Park gas station convenience store, just after he asked a man purchasing some soda where he was from. He described Chicago as “a very tough place” and gestured to the people gathering outside the store.
“Look at what’s happening here,” he said, gesturing outside the store. “Just to go use the bathroom and get something to eat, that’s even a safety concern.”
He grinned and held up a Slim Jim.
About 50 people of all ages stood outside the gas station. Men in Bears hats and women in pink stretch pants blew whistles and filmed on their phones, and a maroon SUV pulled up with young men wearing face masks and whistles hanging out the windows.
Another man stood in the street swinging a massive Mexican flag. Others peered out from apartment windows and balconies overlooking the intersection of West 52nd Street and South Kedzie Avenue.
The agents piled back into their convoy as neighbors screamed at them and spent much of the rest of the afternoon driving haphazardly around Chicago’s Southwest Side and south suburban Summit. Driving away from the gas station down Western Avenue, one group of agents fired a round of pepper balls at a black sedan that pulled up alongside their vehicle.
It wasn’t clear if agents issued a warning before they fired. Ellis’ order, which is not yet widely distributed, bars agents from deploying tear gas or other munitions before issuing two explicit warnings, requires agents in the field to have body-worn cameras and wear clear identification on their uniforms.
Tribune journalists did not witness them make any arrests after the stop in Gage Park.
Earlier on Thursday, agents casing Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood stopped near the intersection of 26th Street and Lawndale Avenue and at one point raised rifles pointed east down 26th from behind a parked van. It wasn’t clear what they were pointing at.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about what prompted their actions.
Later, in the Brighton Park neighborhood, agents stopped and questioned at least two sets of people, but did not make arrests following either interaction.
One of those groups was a set of three men working on a car. As soon as the agents began to back off, the men leaned down and went straight back to work.