Article Summary
- A Department of Justice attorney told a federal judge Thursday that the Trump administration’s Chicago-area “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration enforcement campaign isn’t over.
- The lawyer was responding to claims made in a filing this week asking for the judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by protesters, clergy and journalists over immigration agents’ use of force against civilians.
- Plaintiffs made the surprise motion to dismiss their case after an appeals court indicated it may not uphold the lower court judge’s order restricting use of force including tear gas and other riot control weapons.
- The judge also slammed the DOJ’s contention that dismissing the case would bar future claims of constitutional violations by immigration agents.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
CHICAGO — An attorney for the Trump administration on Thursday told a federal judge that it is “wrong to allege” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Chicago-area “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration enforcement campaign is over, but declined to give any specifics on when the city may experience another surge of federal agents.
The comment came during a hearing Thursday in front of U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis on how best to wind down a lawsuit initiated earlier this fall by protesters, clergy and journalists over federal immigration agents’ use of riot control weapons like tear gas. Earlier this week in a surprise move, plaintiffs’ attorneys asked Ellis to dismiss the case.
After a marathon hearing last month that included video footage of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino tackling a protester and throwing tear gas canisters into a crowd, Ellis issued a searing ruling granting a preliminary injunction restricting agents’ use of force. But the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals halted Ellis’ order, siding with the Trump administration’s argument that the judge overstepped and “impermissibly” infringed on how the executive branch conducts law enforcement activity.
Read more: 7th Circuit stays judge’s order restricting immigration agents’ use of riot control weapons | Restrictions on federal immigration agents’ use of riot control weapons extended indefinitely
The appeals court’s stay on Ellis’ order came in the days after Bovino and roughly 200 more Border Patrol agents left Chicago for North Carolina. At the same time, the Trump administration sent home approximately 200 members of the Texas National Guard who’d been flown to Illinois in early October to protect immigration agents but were blocked from deploying by another federal judge’s order.
Read more: Judge’s block on deploying National Guard extended indefinitely as Supreme Court weighs case | Judge calls feds ‘unreliable,’ temporarily blocks National Guard deployment to Illinois
Plaintiffs’ attorneys used Border Patrol agents’ departure in framing their motion to dismiss as a legal win, without addressing the specter of the 7th Circuit or U.S. Supreme Court gutting Ellis’ order or giving the Trump administration any permanent expanded powers against civilians.
“We won our case the day they left town,” plaintiffs’ attorney David Owens of Loevy & Loevy said in a statement Tuesday. “The people of Chicago stood up to the Trump administration’s bullying and intimidation, and showed them they were messing with the wrong city.”
In response, the administration wrote in a Thursday morning filing that the move was “transparent procedural gamesmanship,” a characterization U.S. Department of Justice attorney Elizabeth Hedges repeated later during the hearing in front of Ellis.
Addressing plaintiffs’ contention that Operation Midway Blitz was over, Hedges said the administration was “pushing back on that as a factual matter.”
“We’re making the point that they’re wrong to allege it’s over,” she said. “They’re free to look at news reports and make whatever conclusions on what they want to do in this court.”
But she demurred when Ellis asked whether immigration agents were “returning to Chicago imminently to continue Operation Midway Blitz.”
“We’re not committing one way or the other on the future,” Hedges said.
Based on news reports last month that Bovino would return to the Chicago area in the early spring with a much larger contingent of agents, Ellis scheduled a trial in the case for March 2, telling attorneys during a mid-November hearing that, “It would make sense that if it does ramp up again, everyone knows what the rules are.”
But that trial, along with arguments set for later this month in front of the 7th Circuit, will now be canceled.
Read more: Immigration officials seek to justify use of force on Chicago-area protesters | Bovino ordered to make daily court appearances after three days of tear gas in Chicago
Hedges also tried to assert that Ellis’ dismissal of the lawsuit would bar members of the public from bringing legal action against the Trump administration alleging possible future violations of their constitutional rights by immigration agents.
But plaintiffs’ attorney Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic disagreed.
“A dismissal of this lawsuit can in no way give defendants a free hall pass to beat up press, protesters, priests months (or) years from now and commit other constitutional violations,” he said. “That’s not how the law works.”
Ellis also told Hedges, “that’s now how the law works.”
“And while it was the government’s position that no agent did anything illegal or unconstitutional, having watched the videos, having read the reports, having listened to the witnesses, I strongly disagree,” the judge said.
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