Rising This Week: Accountability
Senior Border Patrol official Greg Bovino must answer for his alleged violation of a court order; local lawmakers challenge immigration officials, and DOJ plans revenge.
All Rise News is now six months old! Keep us growing for the rest of the year.
A senior Border Patrol official in charge of the so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” of Chicago must appear in federal court this week after allegedly violating a court order by throwing a tear gas canister into a crowd.
Seen in the footage is Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who has become a figurehead of heavy-handed tactics of the Trump administration in federal raids sweeping liberal-leaning U.S. cities. Bovino, an official at a civilian agency, accused the U.S. major general who commanded the troop deployment in Los Angeles of possible disloyalty for questioning the need to send the military to MacArthur Park.
In June, Bovino made headlines for falsely claiming to have captured dozens of criminals in a raid, only for local outlets to uncover that 77 out of 78 of them have no criminal record.
Now, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis appears to be throwing down the gauntlet: She ordered Bovino to sit for a five-hour deposition, and she demanded that he appear in person for a status conference on Tuesday. She is deciding how she will enforce her order blocking excessive force against journalists, protesters and clergy.
“Incompatible with a free society”
Facing growing pressure from the courts, Donald Trump’s Justice Department has threatened to prosecute Democratic state and local officials trying to hold federal agents accountable for abuses against their citizens and residents.
After immigration authorities raided Chinatown, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the launching of an online portal to share photographs and videos of ICE activity. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed an executive order establishing an Illinois Accountability Commission, which would create a public record of federal agents’ conduct during Operation Midway Blitz. The Commission will hold open hearings and refer “information or reports of potential violations of law to the agencies or entities responsible for investigating or enforcing such violations.”
In a thinly veiled threat, Trump’s former lawyer turned Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested that Pritzker’s executive action could amount to a criminal conspiracy.
More broadly, Department of Homeland Security officials keep characterizing attempts by ordinary people to record, locate, document, photograph or identify masked ICE officers as “doxxing.”
First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn, from the free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), denounced that notion.
“The identities of people who are out there with badges and guns — who we entrust with a significant amount of authority to deprive people of liberty, and in some cases even life — those identities cannot be secret,” Cohn said in a phone interview. “That is incompatible with free society, and that’s not how a democracy works.”
Blanche also threatened California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi with prosecution if they work with local law enforcement agencies to arrest federal agents who violate state law, citing the U.S. government’s expansive powers under the Supremacy Clause. The constitutional hurdles for state prosecutions of federal agents are considerable, but many legal experts argue they’re not insurmountable. In the radical view of Trump’s Justice Department, it may be a criminal conspiracy to even consider it.
Cohn noted that keeping an eye on government officials makes democracy possible.
“You can’t get more First Amendment than that: That is core political speech,” Cohn said. “The kind of expression that’s required for democratic self-governance to succeed is our ability to discuss the operations of how our government is working, what they’re doing, the abuses they are committing.”
As of press time, state and local officials haven’t been intimidated and are not backing down — even New York Attorney General James, who said she had “no fear” at a recent arraignment for her Trump-ordered prosecution.
The half-year anniversary of All Rise News
Six months ago, I launched this publication with a mission recognizing Trump’s attacks on the rule of law and emphasizing the levers of power that people hold to preserve democracy. It’s an approach that rejects futility, despair, and powerlessness. The tone is urgent and clearheaded about the ongoing assaults on democratic institutions without indulging in the fatalism that serves as authoritarianism’s accomplice.
That mission resonated in a newsletter that now has more than 25,000 subscribers. Every month, our growth has been steady and constant, allowing me to report on the most important news related to law, protest and civic engagement. It’s become more than possible to imagine sustaining, expanding and scaling up this editorial mission. For that, I need your support.
If you can afford to at this time, and you haven’t done so already, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which will unlock our weekly listings in “Rising This Week.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to All Rise News to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.