Thanks to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, we’ve finally learned something about what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol are doing in the Chicago area from the perspective of ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol, which is helpful even if you don’t like what’s going on.
Todd Lyons, acting director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Greg Bovino, chief patrol agent, El Centro Sector, U.S. Border Patrol, did write to this newspaper last month to take issue with one of our editorials and offer their view of events, which we duly published, but beyond that ICE has said little or nothing to reporters as it upends life as we knew it in Chicago. Local officials also tell us they are being kept in the dark.
To say that both ICE and the Border Patrol lack a commitment to transparency is to understate.
But Ellis, a persistent jurist, has managed to extract the information that the Border Patrol has 232 agents in the area, working on “Operation Midway Blitz,” all of whom are equipped with cameras. She also heard from Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers that there are approximately 300 ICE agents assigned to the Midwest, with only about 75-80 total in the Chicago area, somewhat less than many people think. Apparently ICE agents mostly are not equipped with cameras; a lack of funding was cited as a reason in court. That should be corrected.
If there is a viable argument against the use of cameras by federal agents enforcing immigration law in our communities, we have not heard it. And we’re not sympathetic to the line that the use of cameras takes a ton of training. In essence, agents attach a camera to their bodies and turn it on. Chicago’s police officers have been doing it for years in compliance with both departmental policy and state law.
Federal agents have claimed in court and elsewhere that some citizens aren’t just peacefully protesting but are interfering with their duties. Cameras, surely, would be helpful in sorting out what really has been happening. If ICE and the Border Patrol are telling the truth about these incidents, they should have nothing to fear from making the footage available to the American public, ideally under the supervision of a court, not as a judiciously edited propaganda tool.
These agents are acting with the authority of the U.S. government and their actions should be recorded and viewed in the clear light of day, albeit with all of the appropriate safeguards and protections that go into the release of video from other law enforcement agencies whose work routinely involves conflict. It is not “judicial activism” to insist that ICE and the Border Patrol be subject to the same levels of transparency as the Chicago police.
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