Judge presses federal officials on response to Chicago protests. Here’s what she learned

By Cindy Von Quednow, Andi Babineau, Whitney Wild, CNN

Chicago (CNN) — US District Judge Sara Ellis still has questions.

During a hearing Monday, she pressed two federal officials over the response to ongoing and intense protests in Chicago amid Operation Midway Blitz, especially after she expanded her temporary restraining order to include having agents on the ground turn on their body worn cameras when encountering demonstrators.

She tried to get a better sense of which agency has responsibility over what, how her restraining order has been disseminated to federal agents working in Chicago, how extensive training on crowd control and protests have been and what happened at certain fraught encounters over the last few weeks.

Here are the main takeaways from Monday’s hearing.

Judge wants body cameras on all officers at protests, not all have them

Ellis early this month issued a sweeping order restricting agents’ crowd control tactics, use of force and actions against journalists documenting protests in Chicago. During a hearing last week, she said she had concerns about whether her order was being followed.

During the hearing, she added mandatory body-worn cameras to her earlier restraining order, saying it appeared agents were not warning demonstrators before deploying tear gas and firing pepper balls at them.

The judge originally required all agents to wear cameras but her order does not require them if they are undercover, not in uniform or exempt by Customs and Border Protection, ICE or DHS policy.

Every CBP agent on duty in Chicago – more than 200 – has a body camera and knows they are required to use it, CBP Deputy Incident Commander Kyle Harvick said during Monday’s hearing.

ICE’s Special Response Teams, however, have not been issued body cameras, ICE Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers testified. They went to one or two field offices but stopped being issued, and would need to go through Congress to get approved, Byers said without elaborating.

Federal agents are trained on how to respond to protesters

ICE agents have been trained on how to respond to demonstrations and how to arrest protesters as part of their use of force training, Byers said. They have the ability to issue felony and misdemeanor citations during demonstrations.

Members of ICE’s Special Response Team have been outside the Broadview detention facility, the center of many anti-immigration enforcement demonstrations monitoring protests, and Byers indicated they too, are extensively trained.

ICE agents are also specifically trained on how to handle reporters and direct press questions to public affairs. He added journalists have the right to observe, as long as they do not interfere.

“As long as they’re in the media area, we shouldn’t have a problem with press,” Byers said.

When questioned about an incident outside the Broadview facility in which a pastor said he was hit with pepper balls, Byers said the pastor did not leave federal property when given multiple commands to do so.

Rev. David Black said he was outside the facility praying for the ICE officers and those detained inside when he was hit. He told CNN’s Erin Burnett on October 9 there was no warning before less-than-lethal force was used during the demonstration.

“After they shot me in my head and my face, and multiple times in my torso, arms and legs, I was shielded by the bodies of others who were there who rushed in to support me and took many more hits that were intended for me,” Black said.

Federal leadership’s a ‘revolving door,’ with multiple agencies on the ground

Operation Midway Blitz is Trump’s recent ICE deployment across Chicagoland, yielding more than 1,000 arrests of migrants across Illinois between September 8 and October 3, DHS said.

Harvick on Monday reiterated the White House’s denials of news coverage of tear gas used on protesters without warning in a recent demonstration in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, although he acknowledged he had not seen it personally. Sean Skedzielewski, an attorney representing the Trump administration, last week said the judge was relying on “one-sided and selectively edited media reports.”

When force is used during protests, reports are reviewed by ICE leadership, the Office of Professional Responsibility and a review committee to determine if the use of force meets policy, Byers said.

The agency’s Special Response Team falls under the same enforcement mission as ICE, but members report directly to Byers, he said, adding ICE leadership has been “kind of a revolving door.”

Harvick and Byers testified Monday after Russell Hott, the former interim head of Chicago’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, had left the Chicago area to return to his permanent job as field operations director in Washington, DC.

Ellis will continue to question top brass at a later time after saying Monday she will still depose Hott and Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent at CBP.

She added since Hott was the highest officer in Chicago at the time the protests occurred, he should be able to speak to what happened on the ground.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Andy Rose contributed to this report.