Crime & Law

Judge Grants Voluntary Dismissal of Lawsuit Over Federal Agents’ Use of Force

A federal judge has agreed to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought by Chicago journalists and protesters who sought to limit federal agents’ use of force amid expanded immigration enforcement operations throughout Illinois.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis granted a request by the Chicago Headline Club and other plaintiffs to voluntarily dismiss their own lawsuit, days after she expressed concerns about what doing so could mean in future cases where immigration agents are accused of misconduct.

Court records show Ellis decertified the class and agreed to dismiss the case without prejudice. That would allow for other future cases to move forward after U.S. Department of Justice attorneys previously argued that once this case was dismissed, protesters and journalists should be barred from filing a new suit even if immigration agents are accused of future constitutional violations.

The lawsuit was filed last fall after journalists, protesters and clergy members in and around Chicago claimed they had been targeted by federal immigration agents, who subjected them to a “pattern of extreme brutality” through their use of riot control weapons without justification.

Finding that federal immigration enforcement agents repeatedly used force that “shocks the conscience” and then lied about their actions, Ellis issued a sweeping preliminary injunction as part of that lawsuit designed to permanently rein in agents’ use of tear gas, pepper balls and other crowd control measures.

Witnesses in her courtroom testified during a daylong hearing last month about agents pointing firearms at them without provocation, being hit with pepper balls or tear gas and threatened simply for documenting immigration detentions.

Ellis repeatedly said that federal agents, including Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, lied about the threat posed by protesters and their conduct on the streets of Chicago. Federal agents “indiscriminately” fired tear gas at Chicagoans, tackled them, beat them, struck them with pepper balls and pointed weapons at them, Ellis found.

The Department of Justice appealed that injunction, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to temporarily halt the order. Weeks after that ruling, the plaintiffs filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss their own case.

While the Headline Club’s case is finished, Ellis last week agreed to reassign to herself another case brought by the city of Chicago and state of Illinois over the federal government’s allegedly illegal immigration enforcement tactics.

The new lawsuit includes broader claims than the Headline Club case, which largely centered on First Amendment violations by federal agents who deployed tear gas, pepper balls and other weapons against journalists and protesters during the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration enforcement operation.

The sweeping 103-page lawsuit claims that Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — who have conducted numerous aggressive raids in and around Chicago since the Trump administration launched “Operation Midway Blitz” last September — have acted as “occupiers” rather than law enforcement.

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