After making this the the most fraught Halloween we can remember in Chicago, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino evidently has decided to try to render the 2025 Christmas season one to remember for all the wrong reasons, too.
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Bovino and dozens of his Border Patrol officers returned to the area in recent days and resumed their practice from earlier months of snatching at least one tamale vendor off the street and patrolling Home Depot parking lots, where migrants look for daily work.
In Forest Park, Bovino was heard to say, “We love Chica-ho-ho-ho,” as drivers honked their horns in anger. “Merry Christmas, if I don’t see you again,” Bovino called out to another unhappy crowd.
The return of Operation Midway Blitz, which apparently won’t run nearly as long as the weekslong effort in the fall that badly disrupted peace of mind and ordinary commerce in Chicago, appears to be a performative reminder to Latino communities throughout the area that federal immigration authorities will be returning again and again.
Bovino’s macho posturing also is clearly a form of psychological warfare. There is little local authorities can do to stop the Border Patrol from coming and going, and Bovino seems to be enjoying reminding Democratic officeholders in Illinois of precisely that fact.
We’ve written before that immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the feds. They can choose to exercise that authority in a responsible, professional manner. Or they can choose to make a spectacle of themselves. So far, the Trump administration has chosen the latter course, and it’s a disservice to our region that’s unpopular to boot.
Don’t believe us? Well, maybe then consider the words of Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff.
In a bombshell interview recently published by Vanity Fair, Wiles had this to say about the administration’s deportation efforts. “I will concede that we’ve got to look harder at our process for deportation,” she said. Criminals absolutely should be deported, she said, “but if there is a question, I think our process has to lean toward a double-check.” She criticized the case of two mothers who were arrested and deported along with their children as they arrived for a voluntary meeting with immigration authorities.
It’s clear now that Wiles regrets being as candid as she was with Vanity Fair, but at least as it pertains to the administration’s heavy-handed deportation tactics, she spoke for the vast majority of Americans.
Public polling has made clear for months that most Americans want the administration’s focus on those in the country illegally who are committing crimes, not those who are here without permission and simply seeking opportunity for themselves and their families.
Indeed, in Chicago in recent weeks we’ve seen some horrendous crimes allegedly committed by migrants. The most alarming of them was the unprovoked stabbing death of a 49-year-old homeless man in the Loop in the early morning hours of Nov. 23. Charged as an adult with murder was 16-year-old Venezuelan Wuinayker Rodriguez-Vasquez. He had no prior record in Illinois, but had been the subject of a 2023 case in Texas pertaining to his admissibility to the U.S., according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Two other Venezuelan migrants, both 14, were charged in the crime as well; their identities haven’t been released because they are juveniles.
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Migrants like Rodriguez-Vasquez are the sorts of people on whom most Americans would like Bovino and company to focus. But that level of targeted work obviously is more labor-intensive — and less triggering of ordinary Chicagoans — than staking out Home Depot parking lots.
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