“The Court finds Defendants’ evidence simply not credible,” Judge Sara L. Ellis writes in opinion granting a preliminary injunction against federal troops’ use of force against protesters and observers.
CHICAGO — Yesterday, exactly two weeks after announcing her oral ruling on Nov. 6, Judge Sara L. Ellis of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued her written order and opinion, granting a preliminary injunction in Chicago Headline Club v. Noem. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of demonstrators, clergy, and reporters, seeks to restrain federal troops from continuing to use excessive force against peaceful protests.
As of late last week, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) troops appear to have left the Chicago area. The commander of Operation Midway Blitz, Gregory Bovino, departed for Charlotte, NC, and DHS has left their command center at Naval Station Great Lakes. There is peace again on the streets of Chicago. Little Village—the predominantly Latino Chicago neighborhood repeatedly terrorized by DHS forces—is already showing signs of life returning to normal.
Judge Ellis’s order—a remarkable 233-page opinion on DHS abuses in the Chicago region and how government officials from the top down lied in attempting to justify them—will go down in history as one of the defining documents of the second Trump administration.
“Plaintiffs submitted a mountain of evidence, providing the Court with over eighty declarations, numerous videos and articles, and other evidence,” wrote Judge Ellis. “Defendants did not rebut anything that Plaintiffs set forth in their declarations or testimony, even with [body-cam] footage.”
Of videos and other evidence submitted by the government to supposedly justify its use of force, she writes: “A review of them shows the opposite—supporting Plaintiffs’ claims and undermining all of Defendants claims.”
Throughout her book-length order, Judge Ellis meticulously documents dozens of incidents of excessive force by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Patrol (CPB), and other federal forces deployed to the region by President Trump. And, in each instance, she cites evidence clearly disputing the government’s claims, and calls out the lies Bovino and other officials told under oath to attempt to justify their actions.
These lies—which Judge Ellis catalogs at length—range from the general (like persistently mischaracterizing objectively peaceful protests as violent) to the specific (like Gregory Bovino denying using force after watching video in which he tackled a protester, or claiming to have been hit in a head with a rock before personally throwing tear gas in Little Village).
Among the more damning rebuttals Judge Ellis makes is to debunk the DHS narrative about how agents “face constant danger from cars ramming them on purpose.” On the stand, CBP officials testified that agents have been rammed “every day” during Operation Midway Blitz. And this week, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was pushing that narrative, claiming there had been 78 vehicular attacks against CBP this year, and 28 against ICE—a “1,300% increase.” But Judge Ellis, reviewing one such video, found that the agent “drove erratically and brake-checked other motorists in an attempt to force accidents that agents could then use as justifications for deploying force.”
In the highest profile such “vehicular attack,” Marimar Martinez was shot five times by CBP agent Charles Exum on Oct. 4. DHS claimed Martinez was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, and that Exum shot her in self-defense after 10 cars ambushed CBP agents. Just yesterday, however, a federal judge dismissed all charges against Ms. Martinez and another of the alleged attackers, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, at the request of federal prosecutors.
“Overall, after reviewing all the evidence, the Court finds that Defendants’ widespread misrepresentations call into question everything that Defendants say they are doing in their characterization of what is happening at the Broadview facility or out in the streets of the Chicagoland area during law enforcement activities,” Judge Ellis writes.
And the lies, Judge Ellis makes clear, began all the way at the top. As she did in her oral ruling, Judge Ellis begins her order by invoking the “city of the big shoulders” immortalized in Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago,” and contrasting that image with President Trump’s depiction of Chicago as “Chipocalypse,” a city “in a vise hold of violence, ransacked by rioters, and attacked by agitators—which justifies the unprecedented swath of indiscriminate uses of force unleashed on journalists, peaceful protestors, and religious practitioners.”
“This case ultimately turns on whether the Chicagoland area, and Chicago specifically, is the City of Big Shoulders or Chipocalypse Now,” Judge Ellis writes. “The Chicagoland this Court sees […] is a vibrant place, brimming with life and hope, constantly rebuilding itself to create a more just society…”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include media outlets such as Block Club Chicago, Chicago Headline Club, the Chicago Newspaper Guild Local 34071, the National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians Local 54041; religious leaders like Pastor David Black, Father Brendan Curran, and Rev. Abby Holcombe; and individual journalists, protesters, and observers. Additionally, the plaintiffs have been granted class certification, allowing them to represent other similarly situated individuals throughout Northern Illinois.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Loevy + Loevy, the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago School of Law, First Defense Legal Aid, Protect Democracy, and the ACLU of Illinois.
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Learn more about CHC v. Noem, and find documents, video evidence, news, and other resources here.
