Judge blasts Trump’s Chicago border ‘Blitz,’ extends curbs on use of force that ‘shocks the conscience’

The judge began with the famous poem, which challenges people who would “sneer” at this city to show another town “with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning” as Chicago, which it called the “City of the Big Shoulders.”

That Chicago, the one depicted in Carl Sandburg’s beloved verse, is the one U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis embraced and read aloud in court Thursday when she handed down a historic order that further restricts federal agents’ use of force during their deportation campaign here.

The force she’s seen so far, she said, “shocks the conscience.”

“From Aurora to Cicero, and Chicago to Evanston to Waukegan,” Ellis said, “this is a vibrant place, brimming with vitality and hope, striving to move forward from its complicated history.”

But, she said, “the [Trump administration] would have people believe instead that the Chicagoland area is in a vice hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators.”

That “simply is untrue,” she told the courtroom. She said it’s undermined by the Justice Department’s own evidence. Its arguments, she said, “lack credibility.”

That’s partly because of U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who she said “admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village.”

U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino yells at protesters outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.

She also pointed to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent Kristopher Hewson, though. He told the judge from the witness stand Wednesday that footage of him and his officers dealing with protesters caught him only saying the words, “get ‘em.”

“Clearly, what he said,” Ellis countered Thursday, “was ‘hit them.’”

The judge spoke for more than 90 minutes, outlining a preliminary injunction similar to the temporary restraining order she handed down a month ago. Except, this one will remain in effect while a lawsuit over the feds’ tactics plays out.

Ellis’ new order forbids agents from using “riot control weapons” against protesters or observers who pose no immediate threat, and without two warnings. It also adds a restriction on “chokeholds, carotid restraints, neck restraints, or any other restraint technique that applies prolonged pressure to the neck that may restrict blood flow or air passage.”

Such restraints can only be used if they’re “objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

It also requires agents to display identifying star or badge numbers “conspicuously” in “two separate places.”

The order is the result of a lawsuit over the treatment of protesters and journalists. It was brought by media organizations such as the Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Newspaper Guild, which represents journalists at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ellis told the courtroom that “the unlawful activity by a few protesters does not transform a peaceful assembly into an unlawful assembly.”

And, she said, “the public has a strong interest in having a government that conducts itself fairly and according to its own stated regulations and policies.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the order “an extreme act by an activist judge that risks the lives and livelihoods of law enforcement officers.” The official said that officers have been attacked numerous times.

“Despite these real dangers, our law enforcement shows incredible restraint in exhausting all options before force is escalated,” the spokesperson said. “DHS law enforcement will continue to enforce the laws of our nation, just as they do every day across the country.

“We shall appeal.”

The Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

Any challenge to Ellis’ order would start in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has already undone one order from Ellis in the case. It said her demand that Bovino appear in her courtroom every weeknight over seven days would infringe on the separation of powers.

Still, judges sitting in the Dirksen Federal Courthouse have mostly ruled against the Trump administration since the start of Operation Midway Blitz. A judge last month blocked President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops within Illinois.

Another judge Wednesday issued an order governing conditions inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in west suburban Broadview.

Bovino and Hewson have said their agents’ conduct has comported with Ellis’ orders — even before she began to hand them down Oct. 9. But the plaintiffs’ lawyers used an eight-hour hearing Wednesday to lay out several alleged violations.

The judge heard from a pastor who said he was shot in the head with pepperballs while praying outside the Broadview facility, a woman who said she wound up staring down the barrel of a gun after recording the arrest of day laborers, and a woman who said she was followed by agents after she called them “stormtroopers” and suggested they smile in a video for “the Hague.”

That has all raised questions about whether there’s even any meaning to Ellis’ orders. Steven Art, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued to reporters after court that there has been “some level of compliance.”

That was particularly true, he said, after Ellis on Oct. 24 ordered Bovino to appear in her courtroom. Bovino complied with that order, which preceded the one later undone by the appellate court.

In the roughly two weeks before Bovino appeared in Ellis’ courtroom, Art said, agents deployed tear gas seven times. But when Bovino was told to come to court, he said, “we saw the tear gas suddenly stop.”

The Trump administration, Art argued, “is all bark, and just a little bit of bite.”

“When they have to come and testify under oath about why they’ve done a thing, I think that has an effect,” he said.

Still, Art argued there may be an even greater deterrent effect when the agents’ use of force is “met with folks who are speaking out against that force.”

He said it’s about “the community tuning in. And “realizing that there is lawlessness on the streets.” And ultimately telling the feds, “what you have been doing here in our communities is disgraceful, and we want you out of here.”

Neither the reporter nor editors who worked on this story — including some represented by the Newspaper Guild — have been involved in the lawsuit described in this article.