Border Patrol’s Bovino Ordered to Appear in Chicago Courtroom

US Border Patrol chief patrol agent Gregory Bovino, the face of the intensive “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration crackdown in Chicago, must appear in federal court next week after facing allegations he threw tear gas into a crowd of people without warning or justification.

In a brief docket entry Friday, Judge Sara L. Ellis of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois required Bovino’s appearance at a hearing in her courtroom on Oct. 28.

Her order comes on the heels of allegations that Bovino, who was spotted with federal agents this week in a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood, violated Ellis’ order prohibiting agents from using tear gas or pepper spray without issuing proper warnings.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the underlying case—a coalition of protesters, journalists and clergy—filed notice Thursday of a video apparently showing Bovino tossing a canister of tear gas toward a group of people with no audible warning.

Ellis called Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officials into her courtroom earlier this week to question them about alleged violations of her order. The officials largely defended agents’ actions as being necessary to protect their safety. Ellis subsequently allowed attorneys to depose Bovino and two other officials with knowledge of Chicago-area operations.

But unlike a deposition, if Ellis questions Bovino in her courtroom on Oct. 28, his answers will be public and subject to scrutiny of attorneys, journalists and citizens closely following his agency’s actions.

Immigration agents apparently part of “Operation Midway Blitz” have been seen throughout Chicago and its suburbs in recent weeks, and demonstrators have routinely been met with “riot control” weapons such as tear gas and pepper spray. Ellis’s order hit the docket Friday almost simultaneously with news reports that federal agents used tear gas on people in a wealthy part of the Lakeview neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side.

Plaintiffs are represented by Loevy & Loevy, Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, Protect Democracy Project, First Defense Legal Aid, Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and Roger Baldwin Foundation. Defendants are represented by the US Department of Justice.

The case is Chicago Headline Club v. Noem, N.D. Ill., No. 1:25-cv-12173, order 10/24/25.