CBP agents are back in Chicago, and they didn't even wait until after the holidays.
On Tuesday, Dec. 16, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino rolled back into the city with a convoy of agents, about a month after he left to run shorter crackdowns in Charlotte and New Orleans. He'd been photographed in New Orleans just the day before. By Tuesday, he was spotted with dozens of agents in Cicero, Brighton Park, Little Village, and Back of the Yards.
The Berwyn Cicero Rapid Response team confirmed agents in Little Village around 9:30 a.m., traveling in a caravan of at least seven vehicles and targeting people through alleys. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) said more than a dozen people were taken across four communities. DHS claimed 35 arrests, plus two U.S. citizens it accused of "impeding" officers.
Gov. JB Pritzker said nobody gave his office any notice.
CBP agents are back in Chicago "Right before the holidays"
The timing is its own kind of cruelty. Families with mixed immigration status are trying to buy presents, plan dinners, and get their kids to school, all while watching unmarked SUVs creep down their blocks.
State Rep. Lilian Jimenez called it "very cruel to come in and snatch people off the streets" and tear families apart just before the holidays.
Ella Bueno, a Little Village resident who patrols her neighborhood watching for federal agents, saw several people detained that day. "It's just so hard to watch. You feel so helpless," she said.
At Enlace Chicago, a community center in Little Village, staff locked the doors when about a dozen agents showed up. Executive director Marcela Rodriguez said Bovino walked up to the front door smiling and waving at her staff. Then agents detained two men right across the street, including one who was desperately trying to get his key into his own front door.
"As if causing fear in our community brought him joy," Rodriguez told reporters.
U.S. Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García said the agents came to separate families, "sow panic, and intimidate hardworking people" at a time when families should be celebrating in peace.
Mayor Brandon Johnson noted that Bovino brought a film crew along again. In other words, somebody's worst day is being recorded as content.
"The worst of the worst"? The numbers say otherwise
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted the agency never really left Chicago and is going after "the worst of the worst."
The government's own records don't back that up. The Chicago Tribune reported in November that out of 614 people on a Justice Department list of Chicago-area arrests, just 16 had criminal histories that posed a high public safety risk.
So who gets caught in the net? This fall, it was landscapers, construction workers, and a mom detained after dropping her child off at school. Those are the "dangerous criminals" this operation keeps finding.
A federal judge already caught Bovino lying
Chicago knows exactly who Bovino is. He led Operation Midway Blitz, which launched Sept. 8. During that campaign, agents fired tear gas into residential neighborhoods, shot pepper balls at clergy and journalists, and pointed guns at bystanders.
On Nov. 6, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a sweeping order limiting how agents could use force, saying their conduct "shocks the conscience." She also found that Bovino had admitted he lied when he claimed a rock hit him in the head before he threw tear gas in Little Village. Video showed he wasn't hit until afterward.
Two weeks later, the 7th Circuit put Ellis's order on hold, calling it overbroad. In early December, the plaintiffs' attorneys moved to drop the case.
So the court's guardrails are gone, and the man a federal judge caught lying is back on Chicago's streets. Families in other states have described the same pattern of brutality. Chicago just gets it with a camera crew.
Chicago learned a lot this fall
Here's what's different this time. Chicago has been through this, and neighbors built real systems to protect each other.
In Little Village, the Little Village Community Council runs what it calls "magic school buses," quietly driving more than 60 kids to and from school every day so their parents don't have to walk past federal agents. In Albany Park, after a mother was detained near a bus stop, parents organized a walking school bus. It now has 50 volunteers and gets about 90 students to class daily.
One Albany Park mom, whose husband was detained on his way to work, told WBEZ she's terrified of being taken too. "If something happens to me, who will be there for them?" she asked about her two little girls.
That's the real face of this operation. Not cartels. A mother doing the math on who will raise her kids.
State leaders are pushing back, too. "They call it enforcement, we call it harassment," Pritzker said Tuesday. He urged Illinoisans to keep doing what worked this fall: blow the whistles, pull out the phones, record everything, and post it.
Pritzker also pointed to the new Illinois Accountability Commission, which is taking testimony about federal agents' conduct and holds a hearing Thursday. He publicly invited Bovino to show up and answer some questions.
Don't hold your breath.
Fear is the strategy. Chicago isn't buying it.
Bovino's operation depends on people feeling alone. A parent too scared to walk to school. A worker too scared to go to the job site. A neighbor too scared to open the door.
Chicago's answer has been whistles, carpools, phone cameras, and volunteers in yellow vests standing outside elementary schools. None of that stops a convoy. But it means nobody has to face one by themselves.
For more of our reporting on ICE and CBP, visit our ICE & Immigration hub.
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