Federal Violence in Chicago Shocks Conscience, Judge Says (1)

After a month of intense litigation over immigration agents’ repeated use of tear gas and pepper balls against Chicago-area protesters, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction setting guidelines around agents’ use of force during “Operation Midway Blitz.”

The government’s claims of widespread riots and violence against agents weren’t credible, Judge Sara Ellis said from the bench Thursday, issuing an injunction to replace her expiring temporary restraining order.

Ellis noted that community members have gathered to “protect the most vulnerable among us,” documented agents’ operations in the public way, and prayed outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview.

“The government would have people believe instead that the Chicagoland area is in a vise hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators. That simply is untrue,” Ellis said. “And the government’s own evidence in this case belies that assertion.”

Ellis also certified a class including those who “nonviolently protest, observe, document, or report” at immigration operations in the Northern District of Illinois, as well as sub-classes of journalists and religious practitioners.

Plaintiffs’ claims don’t require Ellis to make a finding that agents’ behavior “shocks the conscience,” Ellis said, but if they did, the plaintiffs would succeed.

“Even if this fell under a 14th Amendment analysis, I would find the use of force shocks the conscience,” she said. “While defendants argue that the use of less-lethal force was a de-escalation technique, plaintiffs have marshaled ample evidence that agents instead intended to cause protesters harm.”

Thursday’s rulings are almost certain to be appealed by the Trump administration. Ellis declined to issue a stay pending appeal.

The injunction largely tracks Ellis’ previous temporary restraining order, which requires agents to use weapons like tear gas only in the face of an immediate threat and after issuing clear warnings. The injunction also requires agents to wear two identifiers “conspicuously displayed” on their uniforms at all times, and bars chokeholds and neck restraints except when that force is objectively necessary.

In the course of her lengthy ruling, Ellis quoted from Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and other founders. But she began her remarks by reciting the entirety of Carl Sandburg’s famous “Chicago” poem—and when she read the line “I turn once more to those who sneer at this, my city,” she looked directly at the government attorneys’ table.

Ellis’ decision came on the heels of a daylong hearing Wednesday, which at times grew emotional and tense. “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s aggressive Chicago-area immigration enforcement effort, has drawn repeated protests. Demonstrators have gathered in organized efforts at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview, and neighbors frequently amass in impromptu protests when agents are spotted in the community.

From the bench, Ellis noted witness testimony as well as other evidence in the record of unjustified violence: Agents shoving a bystander to the ground and punching him in the head; an agent throwing tear gas and saying “have fun;" a man shot with rubber bullets while trying to help his family get away from a chaotic scene.

While there have been instances of protesters throwing eggs or water bottles, it hasn’t warranted the “indiscriminate” use of riot-control weapons, Ellis said.

And Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, the face of “Operation Midway Blitz,” repeatedly gave non-credible answers at a recent deposition and even eventually admitted to lying, Ellis said.

At his deposition, Bovino was shown video in which he “obviously attacks and tackles” a demonstrator, then claimed he didn’t use force, Ellis noted, and after watching a video in which a minister is clearly shot with pepper balls, Bovino denied seeing any projectile hit the man.

And nothing in the copious video evidence backs up Bovino’s claim that he was hit in the head with a rock before he threw tear gas canisters in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, Ellis said.

Bovino even eventually admitted those claims were untrue and he wasn’t hit until after he threw the tear gas, Ellis said. The actual footage of that incident doesn’t “match up with agents’ descriptions of the chaos that was going on,” she said.

“The number of protesters was about equal, if not less than, the number of agents gathered at the time that Defendant Bovino threw the tear gas canisters,” she said Thursday. “In fact, when he threw the second one, the crowd was running back.”

The suit was brought by a coalition of demonstrators, journalists and clergy who allege agents’ indiscriminate use of tear gas and pepper spray violates their free-speech rights.

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 the Roger Baldwin Foundation.

The case is Chicago Headline Club v. Noem, N.D. Ill., No. 1:25-cv-12173, ruling 11/6/25.