Tear gas and Halloween costumes in America’s third-largest city

So goes “Operation Midway Blitz”, the federal immigration enforcement effort in Chicago, which started in early September.

UNDER WHAT circumstances can federal agents use chemical irritants on children preparing for a Halloween parade? On October 28th Sara Ellis, a judge for the federal district of northern Illinois, called in Greg Bovino, a senior official at the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, to outline when his officers can deploy tear gas while remaining compliant with a restraining order she previously issued on October 9th. The answer, she made clear, is essentially never.

Halloween is celebrated on October 31 every year, on All Hallows’ Eve. (Unsplash)

Judge Ellis summoned Mr Bovino to court after an incident in which federal agents, confronted with the threat of middle-aged dads shouting at them, lobbed tear-gas grenades just as a crowd of children in costumes were gathering on the street. “These kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in a local school parking lot,” Judge Ellis said. “I can only imagine how terrified they were.” At the hearing neither Mr Bovino nor the lawyers representing the government disputed the specific facts, though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that the use of force was justified because agents were “boxed in”.

The event, in Old Irving Park, a quiet neighbourhood on Chicago’s north-west side, was just one of at least five that week where officials from CBP threw tear gas at seemingly peaceful crowds. So goes “Operation Midway Blitz”, the federal immigration enforcement effort in Chicago, which started in early September. As it has expanded, the government claims to have arrested nearly 3,000 migrants. But the use of tear gas seems to reflect how local resistance, in the form of whistle-blowing protesters, is frustrating their work.

Over the course of just a few days, Border Patrol agents have been filmed lobbing tear-gas grenades out of a car, shoving a woman who was shouting at them to the ground and dragging a 67-year-old man out of his car and pinning him to the ground—allegedly breaking his ribs in the process. In the latter two cases, both victims were citizens, not targets for arrest. These videos, cited in court, have all been viewed by The Economist. According to court documents submitted to Judge Ellis by the plaintiffs, one agent also pointed his rifle at a protester and told him “Bang, bang” and “You’re dead, liberal.” “I never expected to be tear-gassed on a street of multimillion-dollar houses,” says a woman who saw an incident in Lakeview, one of the city’s wealthier neighbourhoods.

Remarkably, even Mr Bovino himself on October 23rd was caught on camera at the front of a phalanx of heavily armed officers throwing a tear-gas grenade in Little Village, the heart of Chicago’s Mexican district. As Judge Ellis noted, he did not appear to issue a warning, as required by her restraining order. He also lobbed the grenade over the heads of a crowd of protesters, which the order also forbade. A DHS spokeswoman said he did so only after somebody threw a stone that hit his head, but the department has provided no evidence of this. Even with the presence of professional photographers and people filming on phones, as well as federal agents’ body cameras, nobody seems to have captured it. Mr Bovino did not have a head injury at his court appearance.

If there is any reason beyond intimidation for this display of force, it seems to be that federal agents are finding their jobs harder. Resistance works like this: on group chats and on Facebook Live videos, activists share information about when federal agents are spotted. When a spotting is confirmed, dozens of people rush to the scene, blowing whistles, shouting warnings and creating traffic to slow cars. Potential targets are ushered inside, where they cannot be arrested without a judicial warrant. With only 200 CBP officers in Chicago, and a similar number from ICE , getting ahead of them is not that difficult. “There are more of us than them,” says Tatiana Solis, a resident of Pilsen, a largely Hispanic neighbourhood.

Whistling in the windy

Baltazar Enriquez, the Mexican-American president of the Little Village Community Council, a non-profit, is among those who rushes to the scene of arrests, usually broadcasting footage live to his Facebook page. He says that his organisation is also transporting 68 children who are either undocumented themselves or have undocumented parents to school each morning. “Beautiful people are willing to come out and help these children get to school safely,” he says. His group is delivering food and other support to street vendors who are hiding indoors. For his troubles, Mr Enriquez says his home was visited by FBI agents earlier this month.

The government view of all this activity is that it is illegitimate, violent interference. Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that organisers are “terrorists, gang members and rioters” (perhaps the children’s Halloween costumes were too convincing). In her hearing on October 28th, Judge Ellis ordered Mr Bovino to report to her in person at court every evening to explain each day’s operations. All body-camera footage must be given to the court, and all officers must wear one when in the field. From now on, “I don’t know that we’re going to see a whole lot of tear gas being deployed,” she said. Mr Bovino listened attentively and promised to comply. But as he left the court building, he got into a car—and, in front of a crowd of protesters wielding camera phones, placed a tear-gas grenade on the dashboard.