U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino said federal agents\u2019 operations had been \u201cgoing very violent\u201d 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\u2019s Southwest Side.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can operate with great skill, legally, ethically and morally,\u201d Bovino said during a brief stop in Gage Park.<\/p>\n
That statement came the same day a federal judge said that agents\u2019 actions \u201cshocked the conscience\u201d<\/a> and declared that Bovino, the top official on the ground in \u201cOperation Midway Blitz,\u201d had repeatedly lied in his deposition<\/a> about whether he had used force against people protesting<\/a> the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on illegal immigration.<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis made those statements while issuing a sweeping prohibition on agents\u2019 use of chemical crowd controls against civilians.<\/p>\n 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 \u201ca very tough place\u201d and gestured to the people gathering outside the store.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at what\u2019s happening here,\u201d he said, gesturing outside the store. \u201cJust to go use the bathroom and get something to eat, that\u2019s even a safety concern.\u201d<\/p>\n He grinned and held up a Slim Jim.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t clear if agents issued a warning before they fired. Ellis\u2019 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.<\/p>\n Tribune journalists did not witness them make any arrests after the stop in Gage Park.<\/p>\n Earlier on Thursday, agents casing Chicago\u2019s 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\u2019t clear what they were pointing at.<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment about what prompted their actions.<\/p>\n Later, in the Brighton Park neighborhood, agents stopped and questioned at least two sets of people, but did not make arrests following either interaction.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino said federal agents\u2019 operations had been \u201cgoing very violent\u201d the same day…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":360991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5295,5386,1818,409,1370,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-360990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115505631579753677","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}