A federal judge castigated the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday for its aggressive use of force during an illegal immigration crackdown in Chicago in recent weeks, banning the use of tear gas and other crowd-control weapons “unless necessary to stop the immediate threat of physical harm.”
Judge Sara L. Ellis, of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, said that government officials, including the senior Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, had repeatedly lied about their own tactics and the actions of protesters.
The injunction granted by Judge Ellis on Thursday extends temporary restrictions that she issued last month. Judge Ellis ordered federal agents to wear body cameras, give at least two audible warnings before using riot control weapons, and to use those weapons only to “preserve life or prevent catastrophic outcomes.”
She said the restrictions were necessary because immigration agents in Chicago had pointed guns at civilians who were not presenting a physical threat, used pepper spray, deployed tear gas and shot pepper balls.
“I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Judge Ellis, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, said in a ruling from the bench. She added: “The use of force shocks the conscience.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Judge Ellis’s ruling followed an eight-hour preliminary injunction hearing on Wednesday, a proceeding that offered a split-screen view of the arrests and clashes that have played out on Chicago streets under the Trump administration’s federal crackdown on illegal immigration for more than two months.
Clergy members, protesters and other Chicago residents described aggressive tactics used by federal immigration agents, including firing tear gas in residential neighborhoods without warning, throwing protesters to the ground during arrests and shooting pepper balls at a minister’s head while he stood in prayer. Lawyers for the Justice Department countered by calling as a witness a supervisor for the Border Patrol, who testified that while the agency had used force during protests and arrests, none of it had been without justification.
Mr. Bovino, the Border Patrol official who has been leading this year’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles, appeared on video in a taped deposition, during which he said that all of the uses of force by his agency’s officers have been “more than exemplary.”
The case before Judge Ellis was brought by a coalition of media organizations, protesters and clergy members, who filed a lawsuit accusing federal agents of “a pattern of extreme brutality” intended to “silence the press and civilians.” The plaintiffs described a pattern of federal agents shooting pepper balls and tear gas at protesters outside a federal detention facility in Broadview, Ill., and throughout Chicago neighborhoods in the course of immigration arrests.
Before delivering her ruling on Thursday, Judge Ellis began by reading Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago,” and then describing the city that she knows: “a vibrant place, brimming with vitality and hope,” where neighbors watch out for one another, help children cross the streets and gather on lawns to listen to jazz on summer evenings.
“The government would have people believe instead that the Chicagoland area is in a vice hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators,” she said. “That simply is untrue, and the government’s own evidence in this case belies that assertion.”
Judge Ellis criticized Mr. Bovino in particular, who initially said that he tossed tear gas canisters in the Little Village neighborhood during an incident in October because he was hit by a rock. He then backtracked after video evidence did not support the account, the judge said.
“Defendant Bovino admitted that he lied,” Judge Ellis said. “He admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village.”
Witnesses on Wednesday described their interactions with the Border Patrol as frightening and traumatizing, leaving them shaken and, in some cases, physically harmed.The Rev. David Black, who has been a regular protester at the Broadview facility, said that after he was struck in the head with a pepper ball, it was days before he felt comfortable enough to return.
“It’s made me afraid to minister in public,” he said.
Jo-Elle Munchak, a lawyer who lives in the Edgewater neighborhood, testified about an incident near her home in October, when she filmed Border Patrol agents arresting a landscaper. After the arrest, she said, agents followed her while she was parking her car, pounding on the windows and pointing a gun at her.
“It really shook me up,” she said. “I’ve never had a gun pointed at me. I didn’t understand why I was being stopped.”
Sarmad Khojasteh, a lawyer for the Justice Department, argued that the behavior of protesters in Chicago had gone beyond what is protected by the First Amendment. Some demonstrators have physically threatened federal agents, for instance, he said.
“Is there a world where anyone would say that’s protected speech?” Mr. Khojasteh said.
Kristopher Hewson, a Border Patrol agent who was called by the government to testify, said that it was protesters who were violent, threatening officers, calling them names and impeding their work wherever they went.
He also said that tear gas was not harmful or a “serious” weapon.
Steve Art, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the court that chemical agents like the ones deployed on Chicagoans in recent weeks have been banned for use in war.
“They are inciting violence, and then they are using the violence that they have created to justify even more violence,” he said of federal agents. “They are harming everyone.”
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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