DOJ lawyer says it’s ‘wrong to allege’ Operation Midway Blitz is over
[December 05, 2025]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — An attorney for the Trump administration on Thursday told a
federal judge that it is “wrong to allege” the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security’s Chicago-area “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration
enforcement campaign is over, but declined to give any specifics on when
the city may experience another surge of federal agents.
The comment came during a hearing Thursday in front of U.S. District
Judge Sara Ellis on how best to wind down a lawsuit initiated earlier
this fall by protesters, clergy and journalists over federal immigration
agents’ use of riot control weapons like tear gas. Earlier this week in
a surprise move, plaintiffs’ attorneys asked Ellis to dismiss the case.
After a marathon hearing last month that included video footage of U.S.
Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino tackling a protester
and throwing tear gas canisters into a crowd, Ellis issued a searing
ruling granting a preliminary injunction restricting agents’ use of
force. But the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals halted Ellis’ order, siding
with the Trump administration’s argument that the judge overstepped and
“impermissibly” infringed on how the executive branch conducts law
enforcement activity.
The appeals court’s stay on Ellis’ order came in the days after Bovino
and roughly 200 more Border Patrol agents left Chicago for North
Carolina. At the same time, the Trump administration sent home
approximately 200 members of the Texas National Guard who’d been flown
to Illinois in early October to protect immigration agents but were
blocked from deploying by another federal judge’s order.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys used Border Patrol agents’ departure in framing
their motion to dismiss as a legal win, without addressing the specter
of the 7th Circuit or U.S. Supreme Court gutting Ellis’ order or giving
the Trump administration any permanent expanded powers against
civilians.
“We won our case the day they left town,” plaintiffs’ attorney David
Owens of Loevy & Loevy said in a statement Tuesday. “The people of
Chicago stood up to the Trump administration’s bullying and
intimidation, and showed them they were messing with the wrong city.”
In response, the administration wrote in a Thursday morning filing that
the move was “transparent procedural gamesmanship,” a characterization
U.S. Department of Justice attorney Elizabeth Hedges repeated later
during the hearing in front of Ellis.
Addressing plaintiffs’ contention that Operation Midway Blitz was over,
Hedges said the administration was “pushing back on that as a factual
matter.”
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A Border Patrol agent wears a body camera in Chicago in October.
(Capitol News Illinois file photo by Andrew Adams)
“We’re making the point that they’re wrong to allege it’s over,” she
said. “They’re free to look at news reports and make whatever
conclusions on what they want to do in this court.”
But she demurred when Ellis asked whether immigration agents were
“returning to Chicago imminently to continue Operation Midway Blitz.”
“We’re not committing one way or the other on the future,” Hedges said.
Based on news reports last month that Bovino would return to the Chicago
area in the early spring with a much larger contingent of agents, Ellis
scheduled a trial in the case for March 2, telling attorneys during a
mid-November hearing that, “It would make sense that if it does ramp up
again, everyone knows what the rules are.”
But that trial, along with arguments set for later this month in front
of the 7th Circuit, will now be canceled.
Hedges also tried to assert that Ellis’ dismissal of the lawsuit would
bar members of the public from bringing legal action against the Trump
administration alleging possible future violations of their
constitutional rights by immigration agents.
But plaintiffs’ attorney Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago
Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic disagreed.
“A dismissal of this lawsuit can in no way give defendants a free hall
pass to beat up press, protesters, priests months (or) years from now
and commit other constitutional violations,” he said. “That’s not how
the law works.”
Ellis also told Hedges, “that’s now how the law works.”
“And while it was the government’s position that no agent did anything
illegal or unconstitutional, having watched the videos, having read the
reports, having listened to the witnesses, I strongly disagree,” the
judge said.
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