Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino Got More ‘Splainin To Do
And uh oh, did he already lie under oath?
And let us go now to Illinois, where Judge Sara Ellis has been grilling DOJ lawyers on behalf of Border Patrol Commander / diminutive Nazi cosplayer Gregory Kent Bovino, and hearing witnesses in response to a lawsuit from media organizations whose journalists have been gassed and roughed up during Operation Midway Blitz, in the case of Chicago Headline Club et al. v. Noem et al. And while Bovino was not there yesterday, a deposition he recorded last week was!
You’ll recall, Bovino was temporary-restraining-ordered last Wednesday by Judge Ellis, and ordered to tell his goons to quit gassing and shooting pepper balls at protestors, journalists, and trick-or-treaters on public streets and without any warning, to get himself a body camera and use it, and to make his agents display some kind of identification so the judge will be able to suss out any culprits violating her orders. And she threatened that if he deployed gas again for no good reason at people First Amendmenting she’d take ICE’s tear gas away.
LAST WEEK!
And then Judge Ellis brought Bovino back in last Thursday for a closed-door deposition. Where apparently most of the time was spent by DOJ lawyers sandbagging, interrupting, and complaining that Bovino should not have to explain any justification for his agents’ use of force, or describe any conversations he’d had with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or Trump henchghoul Stephen Miller about it. And Bovino wailed that the Latin Kings had put a bounty on his head, and agents should not have to identify themselves because then Latin Kings will get them! Sure, Jan. And the government argued they shouldn’t have to submit body camera footage to the court, because then the world might learn of their secret tactics. Which they’ve been openly performing on public streets. And DOJ lawyer Sarmad Khojasteh griped that he had not had enough time to prepare.
Judge Ellis ended up ruling Thursday that Bovino could be asked about his justifications, and conversations, agent identities, and so on.
Then last Friday, Halloween, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals put a stop to the daily 6 p.m. check-ins Judge Ellis had ordered for the week, instructing Judge Ellis that she was treading too hard on the holy Executive Branch by acting as an “inquisitor.”
Bovino responded to that, and Governor JB Pritzker’s pleas to let the children be children and leave them alone to enjoy Halloween, with a defiant Xit.
On Sunday, Commander-in-Chief Donald John Trump went on 60 Minutes to grump and groan that he doesn’t think DHS agents have gone far enough when they tackle young mothers, gas people in residential neighborhoods, and smash car windows. He plans to deport ALL the immigrants, and then maybe he will let the nannies and landscapers back in. Because that’s apparently the only jobs he and his slackjawed supporters imagine that immigrants have, other than trophy wife and paid Soros voter, obviously.
Meanwhile, Bovino keeps getting busted lying about stuff! Apparently the 57-year-old is unaware that most of the rest of the world also carries cameras. There was the protestor who had his charges dismissed after Bovino was caught on film lying about the guy causing a debilitating injury to his testicles.
WEDNESDAY!
And then the plaintiffs in this case also found evidence that Bovino was lying about the incident in Little Village in which he personally chucked a teargas canister at a crowd of high-school-age protestors. Bovino had claimed under oath that he responded in fear after he got hit on the head with a rock. But what do you know, footage showed that was a lie, there was no rock, because of course there wasn’t.
Which takes us to Wednesday, and Judge Ellis considering extending the temporary restraining order to the November 19, and what else she might could do about that contemptuous fuck. With the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court sounding inclined to give King Trump and his gestapo free rein, it might not be a whole lot.
But Judge Ellis heard from witnesses, and plaintiffs’ lawyers played parts of Bovino’s deposition from last week. First up was Father Brendan Curran, who described “federal agents launching projectiles from the corner of the roof at the people who were not armed and not violent in any way.”
Also heard from was Presbyterian pastor David Black, who was shot in the face with pepperballs twice by laughing ICE agents, and noted that the current regime is “not unlike the Empire of Rome, intent on oppressing all those who stand in solidarity with the oppressed.” But, but, Trump’s CHERISHED Christians!
And Judge Ellis heard from Emily Steelhammer, executive director of the Chicago Newspaper Guild, who said “at least 15” guild members reported they had been “hit with rubber bullets, pepper balls, different projectiles, they have experienced the effects of chemical weapons.”
There was 12th Ward Alderperson Julia Ramirez, who described watching non-violent, unarmed protestors in her ward get menaced by DHS goons with their armored tank-like vehicle, then fired on with pepper balls with no warning or order to disperse, in what she said seemed like an attempt to rile the crowd with chaos.
And Jo-Elle Munchak, a citizen on a coffee run who filmed ICE agents kidnapping landscapers and shouted, “It’s almost like they’re stormtroopers or something! […] Smile nice, boys, for the Hague!” and then got a gun to her head.
Youth organizer Leslie Cortez also described an immigration agent pointing a gun at her head on October 1 after she began recording them detaining day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot.
“I could see inside the barrel. It was a traumatizing experience because I never had a weapon drew at me […] it made me really reconsider if this was something safe to do, even though I wasn’t doing anything to obstruct.”
And there was Juan Munoz, an Oak Park Township trustee, who said Bovino personally attacked him, slapping his phone out of his hand and detaining him with no explanation or charges, after ICE descended chaotically and without warning on peaceful protestors at the Broadview ICE facility. Munoz had also previously told the local paper that Bovino had paraded him before Kristi Noem like some kind of a prize pig. Then eight hours later he and other detainees were dumped at a remote gas station.
And then they played parts of Bovino’s deposition, including lawyers playing a video for him of himself telling agents “everybody fucking gets it if they touch you” and “this is OUR fucking city.”
Bovino was asked, “the instruction that you gave your officers was that they had full rein to arrest anyone who so much as touched them?”
He replied, “no.”
Bovino was shown the pepperballs-to-the-face video of the Rev. Black, asked if that was maybe over the top, and responded, “I don’t know what the use of force was here, and I can’t make a judgment either way, because I don’t know.” That priest might have been about to levitate to the roof to roundhouse them!
And has Bovino seen any circumstances where he thought DHS used too much force?
“I’ve not seen our men, or women, deploy force against protesters.”
So that’s the level of deny-your-eyes-and-ears that we are at.
It’s not force, you see, Bovino opined, because speech can be assaultive, if it is someone who “wishes to perpetrate violence of threats, or some overt violent action toward another individual, in this case it would be us in law enforcement.”
But it is not assault to say “see you at The Hague, Broski.”
And then Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Kristopher Hewson opined that tear gas was not dangerous, and does not harm people. Which is simply false, it can cause long-term lung and eye damage and miscarriages and even kill people, and cause harm even by seeping into nearby homes where residents have their windows closed. And here they are, the dumbest bunch of people alive, untrained to deploy it and throwing canisters around toddlers.
But Hewson said he’d never seen any problematic uses of force, and never seen anyone not displaying badge numbers. If only liars’ pants really did catch on fire!
And Hewson blamed the chaos in Little Village on the protesters, who were making Latin Kings gang signs, holding shields they probably planned to use as weapons, and had the audacity to kick tear gas canisters away from themselves. Also one of their trucks got blocked by a box truck. Therefore he had to spray the passenger of that box truck in the face, you see. And then somebody set off fireworks, he claimed, and chaos broke out.
After a long Wednesday, Judge Ellis said she would rule this morning, before the TRO expires at 11 a.m.
Meanwhile, ICE brutalities in Chicago have continued, including a day care worker, legally allowed to work, who was dragged away by armed agents in front of the children.
Make no mistake, among Trump, Miller, Noem, and Corey Lewandowski and down to Bovino, there is no bottom to the depths of depravity DHS will go to. There have been five incidents of ICE shooting unarmed people with bullets so far, and you know they’d love for there to be more, and have been training sniper rifles on protestors in rapt anticipation.
But it seems this judge is trying her very best to hold them accountable, so there is that.
The guy has "Commander Op at Large" as his fucking Xhitter handle? They really are the worst bullies grasping at their flailing masculinity through military cosplay.
How none of these clowns have yet been jailed for contempt is beyond me. "I told you not to do that. You lied to me and did it anyway. Bailiff, handcuff this man."