CHICAGO — An appeals court has paused an order that required U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino to appear each day in federal court in Chicago.
Just before Bovino was to report to a judge at 5:45 p.m. local time Wednesday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to “temporarily” grant a government request for a reprieve.
The ruling comes a day after Bovino showed up in Chicago’s federal court to answer questions about a series of aggressive immigration actions in the area since September.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis had Bovino take an oath and sit in the witness stand to answer questions about why it appeared — through videos and written witness testimonials plaintiffs’ attorneys offered in an ongoing case — his agents were not abiding by a temporary restraining order she issued this month. The order called on federal authorities to curb the use of chemical agents such as pepper balls and tear gas, particularly in neighborhoods or where the general public could be affected.
Bovino is still scheduled to show up at the federal courthouse Thursday to submit to a deposition in the same lawsuit, filed by a group of media organizations and protesters who alleged various government acts of aggression since September.
The 7th Circuit did not restrict any other of Ellis’ requirements in its brief order, including that he, as the head of “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, be equipped with a body camera and receive training in how to use it. Bovino admitted on the stand that he was not wearing one even as he could be seen on video lobbing tear gas canisters onto a crowd in the Little Village neighborhood of the city last week.
Ellis also ordered the government to turn over all incident reports, as well as corresponding video from immigration agents’ body cameras, by Friday. Bovino agreed in court to turn over the evidence under seal and had agreed, before the government appealed Wednesday, to appear in court to deliver daily reports to the judge.
Ellis had also expressed distress over immigration agents’ actions after having seen reports of tear gas deployed in the Old Irving Park neighborhood of Chicago. It is a quiet, safer part of the city, where a confrontation involving police is a rarity. On Saturday, neighbors have said, immigration officers deployed tear gas at the same time young children were lining up for a Halloween parade.
“Those kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot. ... That is why — one of the reasons why I’m having you in today is to ensure that as you go about enforcing the law that it’s done in a manner that is objectively reasonable and consistent with your obligations and the agents under you with the Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment,” she told Bovino, “so that kids in Little Village can feel safe walking to the store or walking to school and not worried about getting tear-gassed and not be terrified where they live. Because that’s not how any of us want to live.”
A government attorney had expressed an objection in court to Ellis’ demands, including saying there were times when immigration agents needed to use chemical agents to tamp down unruly crowds.
