Homeland Security’s deportation agency on Thursday said it arrested a Montenegro man who is in the country illegally but was sworn in this past summer as a police officer in the Chicago suburbs.
Radule Bojovic entered the U.S. on a temporary visitor’s visa and was supposed to leave in 2015 but overstayed, making him a long-time illegal immigrant, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He was hired by the police department in Hanover Park despite that status.
ICE said it arrested Mr. Bojovic on Wednesday as part of its current immigration enforcement surge in Illinois.
The agency said he didn’t have his department-issued weapon on him at the time because he wasn’t allowed to carry it while off duty.
“This is the second known instance in recent months of a local police department hiring an illegal alien and unlawfully issuing him a firearm while on duty in violation of federal law,” said Sam Olson, director of ICE’s deportation office in Chicago.
Hanover Park had announced Mr. Bojovic’s graduation from the police academy in August, saying he was about to start 15 weeks of field training.
Mr. Olson said federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from possessing weapons, though some local departments argue that the law lets some migrants who have a tentative amnesty from deportation, such as DACA recipients, carry weapons while on the job.
In 2023, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat and leading sanctuary policy defender, signed a law authorizing DACA recipients to become law enforcement officers.
