In a courtroom in downtown Chicago on Tuesday, a federal judge admonished Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official who has become a face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, for his agency’s use of force and tear gas in Chicago in recent weeks.
For more than an hour, the judge, Sara L. Ellis of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, read Mr. Bovino restrictions she had previously set as part of a lawsuit over tactics that agents are using and cited examples of times his agents appeared to violate those restrictions.
They used tear gas in a neighborhood where children were about to march in a Halloween parade, Judge Ellis said. They failed to warn residents before tossing tear gas canisters at them, she said, noting an incident in which an agent threw a canister out of a car as it drove away.
The judge then ordered Mr. Bovino, who took the stand in his usual green fatigues and Border Patrol insignia, to appear at the federal courthouse at the end of every weekday to personally provide her with a report on the day’s arrests and incidents.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at 6,” she said, before telling Mr. Bovino that he could get back to work.
The hearing offered Mr. Bovino little opportunity to broadly defend the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, which began in early September and has resulted in at least 3,000 arrests, according to the administration. Judge Ellis asked Mr. Bovino few detailed questions and did nearly all of the talking throughout the hearing, reminding Mr. Bovino of the particulars of the temporary restraining order she issued early this month limiting the use of tear gas.
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