Adam Isacson

Adam Isacson

Director for Defense Oversight

View Profile

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

A contingent of over 200 Border Patrol agents who had been pursuing migrants in an intense, controversial campaign of raids in Chicago since mid-September appears poised to leave the city after arresting more than 3,000 people. Several media outlets, citing official sources, reported that the deployment led by high-profile At-Large Commander Gregory Bovino would be departing shortly. The group’s next likely destinations are Charlotte, North Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana, either simultaneously or consecutively.

Bovino posed on November 10 with about 100 agents in front of downtown Chicago’s iconic mirrored “Bean” sculpture. This recalled a group photo that Bovino posted to Twitter in front of the Hollywood sign in September, shortly before departing Los Angeles. (In both images, nearly all agents’ faces are masked or blurred.)

Bovino, an unusually publicity-seeking agent who began the year as chief of Border Patrol’s quiet El Centro Sector in southeast California, became the face of the Chicago operation, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called “Operation Midway Blitz.” This, and a June-September operation in Los Angeles, were marked by a constant stream of social media posts and videos touting the agents’ activities, along with a similarly constant stream of allegations of racial profiling and human rights abuse, and rebukes from federal judges.

(For more about the Border Patrol contingent’s controversial arrest and crowd-control tactics, including serious allegations of misuse of force, see the “‘Mass deportation’ and human rights in the U.S. interior links at the bottom of this and the last few WOLA Border Updates.)

Posed in front of the “Bean” (formally known as “Cloud Gate”), agents—many with their faces covered, some carrying long guns—shouted “Little Village!” as the photographer snapped the shot. This was a reference to the heavily Mexican-American Chicago neighborhood where the agents carried out many raids and frequently confronted residents. “Making fun of our neighborhoods and communities is disgusting,” responded JB Pritzker (D), the governor of Illinois and a vocal opponent of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The 110-ton sculpture’s creator, artist Anish Kapoor, said he was considering legal action. “Abducting street vendors, breaking doors, pulling people from cars, using teargas on residential street… I mean, this is fascist America and just beyond belief,” said the artist, a supporter of refugee causes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other DHS agencies, along with a reduced number of Border Patrol agents, will remain and continue to operate in Chicago, just as they have in other cities where surges have declined from earlier peaks, such as Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Along with the Border Patrol agents, though, “an on-call task force composed of FBI and assistant U.S. attorneys” will also be departing Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune.

All media reports point to Charlotte, in Bovino’s home state, as a likely next destination, along with New Orleans. The sheriff’s office for Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, told CNN that it had not been in contact with any DHS officials about a possible move to their jurisdiction.

“If the reports are true, it could not have come soon enough,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) said on November 11, adding that Bovino’s agents are leaving behind “trails of tears and chaos.” In a statement reported by CNN, Johnson added, “Greg Bovino’s legacy in Chicago is chaos, criminality, and terror… It is the grassroots resistance to Bovino that has forced them to retreat… Bovino did nothing to make our city safer. He will not be missed in Chicago.” Gov. Pritzker added, “The people of Chicago have deserved better than having CBP [Customs and Border Protection] and Greg Bovino in this city.”

The Border Patrol contingent’s departure comes just days after U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis imposed new limits on their use of force, particularly in crowd control situations. Ellis castigated Bovino for appearing to defy an earlier order limiting use of tear gas and other crowd control weapons; she said that Bovino lied to her about being hit with a rock before personally tossing a tear gas canister at protesters in Little Village, an act caught on video. (Bovino is frequently photographed with a tear gas canister clipped to his uniform.)

The Los Angeles and Chicago operations laid bare a reality known to many border residents: Border Patrol’s tactics are more aggressive and violent than those usually employed by ICE. Nick Miroff explained in a November 10 post at the Atlantic:

Border Patrol and ICE tend to have a different approach to immigration enforcement: ICE officers are used to working in U.S. cities and targeting specific individuals they’re seeking to arrest. Border Patrol agents work in remote desert and mountain areas where they are trained to see anyone they encounter as a suspected illegal entrant. They don’t hesitate to use force on suspects who run or resist arrest. But they’ve never been deployed to U.S. cities at this scale, hundreds of miles from any border crossing.

At the Wall Street Journal, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Tarini Parti found that the mismatch between ICE’s more targeted approach and Border Patrol’s flashy, indiscriminate approach is causing “infighting at DHS.” They note that “longtime immigration officials,” including White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan, “want to rely on traditional methods including using police research to develop target lists” and prioritizing migrants with criminal records. Bovino’s........

© WOLA