CHICAGO—In landmark rulings that could signal the beginning of the end to legal tolerance of the Trump administration’s violent immigration raids and arrests, two federal judges in Chicago, ruling on separate lawsuits, have “thrown the book” at ICE. One demanded an end to the violence used against protesters, demonstrators, the media, and the people they dragoon in their “Operation Midway Blitz.” The other demanded an end to the inhumane conditions in ICE’s detention center in suburban Chicago’s town of Broadview. The Broadview facility resembles prisons in autocratic dictatorships.
Though the Trump regime won an immediate stay of the two decisions from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also in Chicago, its judges indicated they would rule quickly on whether to uphold the lower court rulings.
The November 22 decision by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis featured not just written words but photos and body camera footage of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents singling out peaceful protesters and reporters, as well as supposedly undocumented people the agents rounded up for violent assaults, tear-gassing, rubber bullets, flash grenades, beatings, and worse.
Judge Ellis’s decision, which expanded on her prior preliminary injunction in the case, drew praise from pro-migrant groups and from the two unions, the Chicago News Guild and NABET-CWA Local 41, who sued to stop ICE’s targeted violence. ICE has arrested more than 3,000 people.
News Guild Executive Director Emily Steelhammer testified members of the union said they were hit with rubber bullets, pepper balls, and chemical weapons, including tear gas. The incidents mostly occurred in Broadview, but also took place at other Chicago-area demonstrations.
“Joining the lawsuit was a step we had to take after weeks of our members being targeted by DHS agents, who were indiscriminately throwing tear gas canisters at groups of journalists, pelting them with pepper balls and rubber bullets, threatening and even arresting reporters,” Chicago News Guild President Andy Grimm said after the unions and their allies won Judge Ellis’s first, temporary, injunction. Judge Ellis’s November 22 ruling is the permanent injunction against ICE.
Tear gas was used in a Chicago residential neighborhood recently, where pre-schoolers had to be rushed to safety, away from an outdoor activity near their school. People active at a church near that school said this weekend at a meeting where immigration rights were discussed that they were “caught flat-footed” when the raid happened, “but we will be vigilant and ready going forward.” They now have teams that patrol the neighborhood looking for ICE agents and people who blow whistles to alert the neighborhood when ICE agents are in the area.
Andy Grimm, the union leader added, “Be proud that we stood up for ourselves and our fellow journalists. What has been happening in Broadview is not safe. It was not safe for our members, and it was not safe for our democracy to have journalists targeted for doing their jobs and reporting the news,” he said.
The main lawsuit, by the news organizations and their allies, also made a key point: The ICE agents in Chicago, like those elsewhere, were acting on orders from the anti-migrant GOP Donald Trump regime and from President Trump personally.
Grimm noted that, “Acting on direction from agency heads and from high level officials, including the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, President Trump himself, and the other defendants…the federal officers have determined, and remain determined, to deploy physical brutality, tear gas, mace and pepper spray, exploding pepper balls and rubber bullets, flash grenades; and other tactics specifically designed to intimidate, to instill fear, and to silence those who are protesting” at Broadview.
“These tactics are being used primarily to silence and to retaliate against those protesting in opposition to the immigration policies of the Trump Administration and perceived political enemies.“
The news organizations’ lawsuit revealed that—among other ICE assaults–Shawn Mulcahy, a News Guild member and News Editor of the Chicago Reader, was attacked, though he wore his press credentials, wore a helmet marked PRESS, and carried a notebook while interviewing people outside Broadview.
“On Sept. 26, 2025, while Mr. Mulcahy was clearly engaged in journalistic activity, a federal officer shot him with a rubber bullet or foam round. Later that same day, ICE agents threw tear gas canisters at Mr. Mulcahy and a group of other journalists.
“On the morning of Sept. 29, 2025, in a well-publicized incident, a journalist with CBS Chicago was targeted while in her car driving near the Broadview ICE facility, checking on the status of the protests. A federal agent standing behind the fence shot pepper balls at the journalist’s car, and chemicals went through her window. There were no protests or activities at Broadview at the time. The journalist had to stop her car and get out as the chemicals engulfed the interior of her vehicle,” the suit added.
“The protests at the Broadview ICE facility and the federal government’s violent attempts to silence the protesters became a story of great interest,” the suit against ICE said. “Much of the coverage described the federal officers’ abusive tactics. Defendants sought and are seeking to quash this coverage by attacking and intimidating members of the press.
“These assaults are not incidental or unintentional. They are undertaken by design to intimidate journalists on scene and to frustrate and suppress coverage of the federal officers’ actions toward protesters and immigration detainees.
“The attacks on individual journalists are too numerous to list in full.”
Greg Bovino, ICE’s director of operations in Chicago—who, as a senior Border Patrol officer, previously supervised ICE’s violence in Los Angeles—denied his agents were violent in the Windy City and claimed he was hit in the head with a thrown rock during one protest. The judge, reviewing video and his testimony, said he lied.
One video clip, by a local public official and played in the courtroom in the Broadview case showed Bovino grabbing and tackling a bystander there, slamming him to the ground. Another showed him throwing a tear gas canister at peaceful protesters.
Bovino wasn’t the only liar in the case. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that video and body-camera footage repeatedly showed that individual ICE agents lied, too. It was “difficult, if not impossible, to believe” almost any evidence from the government, Ellis wrote.
One Border Patrol agent testified that protesters held shields with nails in them. Video showed “some of those shields were merely pieces of cardboard,” and none had nails, Ellis wrote. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security—parent agency of both ICE and the Border Patrol–claimed a protester threw a bike at agents in Albany Park. Video showed the agent grabbed the protester’s bike and threw it to the side, Judge Ellis reported.
In her prior ruling, which she renewed and expanded in the case involving the reporters and protesters, Judge Ellis ordered ICE agents to wear badges and banned them from using tear gas and other riot-control methods against peaceful protesters and journalists. She also added that they must wear body cameras.
The second decision, by District Judge Robert Gettleman, issued in early November, described inhumane conditions inside ICE’s Broadview center, and ordered them stopped. The Trump regime denied that the detained people there—media, peaceful protesters, and especially people ICE suspected of being undocumented—were being mistreated.
Judge Gettleman’s temporary restraining order found otherwise, the Associated Press reported.
He ordered ICE to provide detainees “with a clean bedding mat and sufficient space to sleep, soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste, menstrual products, and prescribed medications.” ICE must also allow inmates to shower at least every other day, and should have three full meals and bottled water if they request it.
“People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets. They should not be sleeping on top of each other,” Judge Gettleman wrote.
The temporary restraining order says the holding rooms at the facility must be cleaned twice a day.
Religious organizations are stepping up their activities in opposition to the Trump immigration policies.
A strong resolution calling on the 123 churches of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago to actively support in every way possible the movements to stop ICE raids and the disappearing of people from the communities carried overwhelming support at the group’s convention in Rockford, Illinois, last Saturday
Rev. Primo Racimo, the priest in charge of St. Margaret’s Church on Chicago’s South Side, explained how his congregation and neighborhood had been traumatized on the night of Sept. 30 when the biggest ICE raid thus far in Chicago took place two blocks southeast of his church. He told hundreds of clergy and lay religious leaders listening at the Church Convention in Rockford, Illinois, how 300 ICE agents, helicopters, and drones were used to arrest 42 men, women, and children in his neighborhood and how, until now, not one has been able to be charged with any crime.
As his audience of hundreds sat in silence, he said that the church must lead in the fight to stop the immigration raids and disappearing of people. “We don’t know when this situation ends,” he said. “I lived for almost three decades under dictatorship and fascism in the Philippines. It never occurred to me that this would be happening in the land of the free.”
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