CHICAGO — An attorney for plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging immigration agents in Chicago have used too much force during demonstrations is arguing in court that federal authorities are suppressing and retaliating against people exercising “most American freedoms.”
A preliminary injunction is underway Wednesday in the suit filed by news outlets and protesters.
The lawyer, Craig Futterman, noted recent examples of agents using tear gas on Chicago-area residents, including at a Halloween parade and outside a grocery store. He said senior Board Patrol official Greg Bovino, himself, has been filmed throwing tear gas canisters at protesters.
“We have children, parents and grandparents who will forever be afraid to exercise the very rights that make America great, assaulted by the very people sworn to protect them,” Futterman said.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis has already ordered agents to wear badges and banned them from using certain riot-control techniques, such as tear gas, against peaceful protesters and journalists. After repeatedly chastising federal officials for not following her previous orders, she added a requirement for body cameras.
Ellis will weigh how to respond to allegations that federal immigration agents in the Chicago area have used excessive force, following a surge of recent court filings detailing tense encounters between agents and local residents.
Justice Department lawyer Sarmad Khojasteh on Wednesday accused many protesters of threatening to kill law enforcement officers, impeding their duties and throwing rocks and other objects at agents.
“Such conduct must be rejected,” he said. “To what extent does the freedom of speech protect individuals in obstructing and/or threatening conduct – throwing rocks, bottles, fireworks, surrounding and pinning down law enforcement officials?”
The hearing comes after Ellis questioned Bovino at a public hearing last week, where she took the rare step of ordering him to brief her each evening on the federal immigration crackdown in Chicago. That move was swiftly blocked by an appeals court.
On Tuesday, Bovino appeared in court yet again for a deposition – a private interview – with lawyers from both sides. Parts of the videotaped deposition will be played in court Wednesday, according to court filings.
Attorneys may also call to the stand a pastor who was hit in the head by a container containing a chemical agent while praying outside a federal immigration facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview, local officials detained during protests outside the facility, and a protester who alleges she was hit by a flash-bang grenade that caused temporary hearing loss, court records show.
Court filings released late Monday night shed light on a previous deposition by Bovino in which he acknowledged tossing tear gas and being hit by a rock in the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Little Village last month. Bovino also testified that he has “instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations,” court records show.
Meanwhile, a federal judge is expected to rule Wednesday afternoon after a group of detainees filed a class-action lawsuit against federal authorities, alleging “inhuman” conditions at a Chicago-area immigration facility.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman called the alleged conditions “unnecessarily cruel” after hearing people held at the facility detail overflowing toilets, crowded cells, no beds and water that “tasted like sewer.” He called for the hearing to reconvene at 4:15 p.m. local time Wednesday so that he can issue a temporary restraining order to address the conditions.
