Hours into his sworn deposition last week, Border Control Cmdr. Gregory Bovino was shown video of him tackling a protester at the Broadview immigration facility in September and asked point-blank: Did you apply any force here?
“No,” answered Bovino in the videotaped testimony played in a federal courtroom Wednesday, explaining that all he saw was him making a lawful arrest. That’s different, he said, from a “reportable use of force” like deploying tear gas or shooting someone or using “open-hand strikes.”
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Asked if force could be applied in the course of an arrest, Bovino seemed momentarily confused by the question.
“It’s possible,” he said. “(In this case) the use of force was against me.”
The remarkable exchange was one highlight of a marathon day of testimony before U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, who issued a temporary restraining order last month and is now deciding whether to put more long-term restrictions on the use of chemical agents on crowds and provide enhanced protections for protesters and media.
Judge orders release of US Border Patrol head Gregory Bovino deposition videos: Watch them here
After more than eight hours of testimony and argument, Ellis suspended the hearing and said she would issue an oral ruling into the record at 10 a.m. Thursday, an hour and a half before her temporary restraining order is set to expire.
In addition to Bovino’s video testimony, the judge on Thursday saw images of him tossing tear gas canisters in Little Village, heard his boss, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, tell agents to “go hard” against people who opposed law enforcement, and watched surveillance footage of a pastor being shot in the face with a pepper spray balls.
Ellis heard from more than a half dozen witnesses who say immigration agents pointed guns at citizens and threatened to arrest protesters who were doing nothing more than recording the agents’ activities on the street.
One of them, 12th Ward Ald. Julia Ramirez, testified she went to the scene where an agent had shot a woman in Brighton Park on Oct. 4 and was stunned to see immigration agents rolling what looked like a tank down Kedzie Avenue. Perched on top of the armored vehicle, an agent was pointing a gun at the crowd, she said.
“I couldn’t even believe I was living that. I felt helpless,” Ramirez testified, adding that the episode has had a “chilling” effect on residents and her personally. “I carry my passport around. My grandmother who is also a U.S. citizen doesn’t leave the house. I have to go out for her.”
But the judge also heard from a Border Patrol supervisor who testified about the violence and threats agents have been subjected to on Chicago-area streets, including protesters who fired commercial-grade fireworks at them, wielded makeshift shields outfitted with nails, and threatened to ram their vehicles or call in gang members to shoot them.
Kristopher Hewson, a 19-year Border Patrol veteran, was asked near the end of the day whether he had “hesitation” about testifying.
“Of course I did,” he said. “Coming in here with my face exposed and my name exposed could eventually lead to a doxing event or threats of harm to my family.”
But it was the testimony of Bovino, the 30-year Border Patrol veteran who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration operations, that was center-stage.
Although the deposition itself lasted more than six hours, Ellis watched only clips of Bovino’s testimony in which he not only did not back down one bit on the tactics his officers have used during Operation Midway Blitz, but even doubled down.
Asked at one point by veteran Chicago civil rights attorney Locke Bowman if he stood by remarks he made to CBS that the use of force at the Broadview ICE facility has been “exemplary,” Bovino at first surprised everyone by saying, “No.”
“The uses of force have been more than exemplary,” Bovino then clarified.
But plaintiffs attorneys accused Bovino of lying repeatedly in his testimony, including a blatant misrepresentation about what happened during a high-profile incident in Little Village, where Bovino was seen leading an immigration action that targeted a laundromat and discount mall and sparked vehement protests on the streets.
At one point, Bovino was captured on video throwing tear gas above the heads of the crowd without warning and “despite an absence of threats or violence,” the filing alleged.
Bovino claimed he only did so after being hit in the head with a rock — a statement repeated on social media and again in his deposition, even though no video or other evidence of it happening ever surfaced.
It wasn’t until Bovino came back for a third round of questioning Tuesday that he admitted it had not occurred, Steve Art, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told the judge in his closing argument.
“A government agent who is leading this operation cannot come into court and make stories up and expect to be treated like a credible witness,” Art said.
In their arguments, the plaintiffs said the abuses of immigration agents on the streets of Chicago comes from the very top, including President Donald Trump, who made it “abundantly clear that he selected Chicago for this operation he then ordered and directed DHS to commence this operation here.”
They played video of Noem giving a pep talk to Bovino and his agents at the Broadview facility in early October, saying they should “go hard” at people who voiced dissent against law enforcement tactics — language Bovino later incorporated into his own public statements.
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In his closing, Art said the Department of Homeland Security has “unleashed weapons of war” on Chicago.
“They are using a gas that is banned even in war,” Art said. “They are inciting violence and then they are using the violence that they have created to justify even more violence. They are harming everyone.”
At the end of his argument, Art turned toward the Department of Justice attorneys at the defense table and said, “In our opinion, these defendants should be ashamed of themselves.”
“In our opinion, this is a disgrace,” Art said. “And one of the great things about our constitution is that if that’s what we think, we can say it.”
The preliminary injunction hearing stemmed from a lawsuit the Chicago Headline Club and a consortium of other media groups allege immigration officials have systematically violated the constitutional rights of protesters and reporters during the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration enforcement action, which began in earnest in mid-September and has shown no signs of slowing.
The hearing began with opening statements from the plaintiffs’ lawyers and attorneys for the Department of Justice.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Craig Futterman started off by quoting a previous statement from Bovino, who said “If someone strays into a pepper ball, that’s on them. Don’t protest. If you don’t want to get tear-gassed, don’t protest.”
Futterman said the case wasn’t about some “one-off incidents” where protesters have slashed tires.
“It’s about their practices targeting journalists, targeting clergy and people exercising their constitutional rights,” Futterman said. “We have children, parents and grandparents who will forever be afraid to exercise their very rights that make this country great, assaulted by the very people assigned to protect those freedoms.”
DOJ lawyer Sarmad Khojasteh countered by arguing the case is not about exercising free speech, but allowing law enforcement to do its job in the face of agitators who conflate constitutional rights with violent action.
“This case addresses to what extent does the freedom of speech protect people throwing rocks, bottles, trespassing, pinning down law enforcement, slashing tires, wielding weapons,” Khojasteh said.
The first witness for the plaintiffs was the Rev. Brendan Curran, a priest who testified about clashes between protesters and immigration agents at the ICE Broadview facility and in Brighton Park.
Starting in September, Curran says, he was “heartbroken” to “see an utterly militarized zone” in Broadview
“It was shocking to my eyesight to see the windows boarded up,” he said. “There were snipers on the corners of the roof. I have many loved ones around the country they still don’t believe (me).”
Juan Munoz, an Oak Park Township trustee and frequent immigration protester, testified about a protest he attended in Broadview where he was attacked and pushed to the ground by Bovino — an incident caught on bystander video and played in court.
“He smacked the phone out of my hand and said, ‘You are under arrest, roll onto your side,’ which I did,” Munoz testified. He said he was never told what he was under arrest for, but instead was lined up against a wall inside the facility, where they were interviewed by an FBI agent and processed.
Agents then loaded him into a van with about a dozen other protesters and drove them to a gas station about a mile away from the facility, where they dropped them off with their belongings and no way to get back, he said.
Ellis asked Munoz directly if, as he sat there today, he knew why he was arrested.
“No, I have been given no other information,” Munoz said.
Another woman, Leslie Cortez, testified she was recording agents arresting day laborers at a Home Depot in Cicero on Oct. 1 when agents boxed her in with their SUVs, got out of the vehicle, and one took out a weapon and pointed it right at her.“He aimed it right at me so I could see inside the barrel. … My heart accelerated. I was nervous they were gonna shoot. I froze,” Cortez said.
Jo-Elle Munchak, a licensed attorney, told the judge about a harrowing experience she had when she stopped to film agents arresting a landscaper near her Edgewater home on Oct. 10. In video of the incident played in court, Munchak could be heard telling the agents “You look like you are storm troopers or something. … Smile nice boys for the Hague!”
The arrest went forward without incident, Munchak says. But afterward, as she was parking near her home, the agents blocked her in and “rushed” her car, pounding on her windows. One of them had a gun pointed at her, she said.
“I’d never had a gun pointed at me ever,” Munchak said, her voice shaking on the witness stand. She said they demanded “that I roll down the window, get out of the car or unlock my door. At the same time they were trying to get into my car but it was locked so I shook my head no.”
Munchak said the agents told her they would let her go this time “but the next time I would be detained.” The incident has made her fearful and nervous and has been a frequent topic at therapy sessions, she told the judge.
On cross-examination, Khojaste asked Munchak about her comments to the agents and whether she thought they were “war criminals.”
Munchak said no, but she objects to their “Draconian methods.”
“Do you think they’re like Nazis?” Khojaste asked. “You called them storm troopers.”
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“Right,” Munchak replied, “I was thinking more Star Wars.”
The case before Ellis has received national attention and is one of several occurring simultaneously involving allegations of overreach during Midway Blitz.
The hearing lacked at least one element of spectacle: Bovino did not have to appear as a live witness in court, as the plaintiffs agreed to drop that demand in exchange for an additional 90 minutes of deposition time.
In their motion requesting an injunction, the plaintiffs laid out a series of high-profile incidents over the last month, including clashes between immigration officers in Chicago neighborhoods as well as in the suburbs. The motion accused agents and their supervisors of exaggerating the threat posed by citizens protesting arrests and filming immigration activities and, in many cases, lying about the force used to subdue them.
In one episode from the Lakeview neighborhood on Oct. 24, videos showed that one agent mocked the “vocal but nonviolent crowd of protesters” as tear gas was deployed, saying twice, “have fun!” and laughing at the protesters after the canister went off, according to the plaintiff’s filing.
“The agent then yelled ‘throw another one’ and prepared a second canister,” the filing stated. “Similarly, one agent told another, ‘Hey, throw it (tear gas) for fun.'”
According to the filing, body camera video turned over as part of the litigation showed Bovino telling his officers, “if you need to deploy gas, you deploy (expletive) gas.” One of the officers allegedly responded, “No, we’re good. We’re good. We’re ready to move out whenever you are,” the filing said.
Instead of the agents moving on, more violence ensued, including one agent who fired a pepper spray ball at close range and threw more tear gas at the crowd, “all without warning,” the filing alleged.