Politics

ICE’s Chicago Field Director Abruptly Returns to D.C. After Federal Judge in Illinois Demands His Presence in Court

Russell Hott, the field director for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Chicago, is exiting his post and returning to Washington, a day after a federal judge in Illinois demanded he appear in court to answer questions about his agency’s continued use of tear gas in and around the city.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday confirmed Hott, whom it said was serving in Chicago on an interim basis, is heading back to D.C. as part of a “planned return” to resume his permanent post as field operations director there.

That shift was revealed in a footnote included in a new filing Friday morning by the Trump administration in an ongoing lawsuit over the continued use of tear gas and other so-called “riot control” weapons by ICE and Border Patrol agents in Illinois.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis on Thursday said she was “not happy,” a week after she granted a temporary restraining order barring the use of such weapons against journalists, protesters and anyone not posing an immediate threat to immigration enforcement agents.

The lawsuit was brought after a series of clashes between protesters and agents at ICE’s processing center in suburban Broadview. But since Ellis issued her order, agents have deployed tear gas multiple times in Chicago, including in Albany Park last weekend and following a collision Tuesday between Border Patrol agents and another vehicle on the city’s Southeast Side.

“There’s a reason the Chicago Police Department has policies about car chases and where they occur, and where they need to stop,” Ellis said Thursday, suggesting the tense situation resulted from Border Patrol agents using tactics not appropriate in the nation’s third-largest city.

“We’re not on the border. We are in an urban, densely populated area where crowds are going to converge when there’s a commotion, where appropriate crowd control is important,” she said. “Trying to apprehend and detain people is very, very different when you’re in an urban setting than when you’re out on the border.”

Ellis demanded that Hott appear in court next Monday morning in order to “explain to me why I am seeing images of tear gas being deployed and reading reports that there were no warnings given before it was deployed out in the field.”

But in a new filing Friday, the Department of Justice asked Ellis to reconsider, stating it has since learned of Hott’s departure and offered instead the appearance of Kyle C. Harvick, a Border Patrol deputy incident commander working under the ongoing “Midway Blitz” immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.

During a brief phone hearing Friday afternoon, Ellis said she had no desire to “micromanage” who the government intends to present at Monday’s hearing, but added she’s been “very clear” that she wants to hear from someone who can shed more light on “what’s been going on over the last week.”

“Whoever comes has to be able to answer these questions,” she said. “And if the government chooses … to bring someone in and that person’s answers to me are ‘I don’t know’ and ‘It’s not my responsibility’ … then we’ll come in Tuesday with a different person until I get the answers I want.”

The DOJ claims that the presence of Harvick, rather than Hott, would be more appropriate after DHS determined that it was “mostly, if not entirely” Border Patrol personnel who were involved in those recent tear gas incidents.

In response, attorneys from the law firm of Loevy & Loevy — which represents the journalists and protesters who brought the lawsuit — noted the timeline of Hott’s sudden departure shortly after he was asked to appear in court.

“How convenient,” attorney David Owens wrote in a filing Friday.

“Plaintiffs object because the government should not be allowed to play a game of hot potato with its different agencies using force against civilians in this District,” they continued. “This Court should order Hott to appear as an ICE supervisor, particularly given that the government has not represented in its filing that ICE was uninvolved.”

Ellis on Thursday also said she intended to expand her existing restraining order, requiring all federal agents who are part of Operation Midway Blitz and who have body cameras to have them on during encounters with protesters.

On Friday, she said that decision was not “up for debate” and that she would be amending that order to add in that new requirement immediately.

“This was not a suggestion,” she said. “It wasn’t a hint, it wasn’t a topic of conversion. It was an order.”

Note: Loevy & Loevy have done legal work for WTTW News. 

CNN contributed to this report.

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