By Tom Polansek and Ted Hesson
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Gregory Bovino, a top U.S. Border Patrol official, said his team made arrests in Chicago on Tuesday as part of an operation targeting immigrants in the U.S. illegally with criminal records.
Bovino’s arrival in Chicago signaled a potential escalation of efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration in the third largest U.S. city, drawing criticism from local officials who said his tactics were overly aggressive and more for show than for improving safety.
Alongside a video he posted on X showing scenes of Chicago set to music, Bovino, who played a prominent role in a deportation crackdown in Los Angeles, said he would continue his mission by arresting “criminal illegal aliens.”
“We are already going hard this morning!!! Many arrests,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said last week it was launching an operation in Chicago and other parts of Illinois to target criminals among immigrants in the U.S. without legal status. The department said the operation was necessary because of city and state “sanctuary” laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker protested Republican Trump’s plans to send more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“They send ICE in here to cause challenges and mayhem on the ground,” Pritzker told reporters.
He said Bovino seemed to be in charge of the operations in Illinois and “has a history of acting in ways that are quite violent against people, many of whom are not criminals.”
“They are grabbing people who have brown skin or who speak with an accent or who speak another language,” Pritzker said.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she was also in Chicago on Tuesday and that the department detained offenders with arrests for assault, driving under the influence and felony stalking.
“She was here for a few hours, unwilling to answer questions about what they’re doing on the ground, unwilling to tell us what ICE is going to do over the next coming weeks,” Pritzker said.
Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official who became an at-large commander under the Trump administration, played a lead role in Trump’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles.
That campaign, which included canvassing neighborhoods and Home Depot parking lots for possible immigration offenders, triggered a legal challenge over racial profiling and led a federal judge to block the aggressive patrols in July. The Supreme Court earlier this month lifted the lower court’s injunction, allowing the tactics to resume.
“The Trump administration continues to spread fear within our communities and tear families apart,” said U.S. Representative Bill Foster, a Democrat from Illinois.
Bovino previously served as Border Patrol’s chief patrol agent in California’s El Centro Sector along the border with Mexico, where he became known for highly produced social media videos promoting their work in the relatively remote area.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago and Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Rosalba O’Brien)
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