Federal judge who challenged Bovino will supervise state's new case against Trump's deportation blitz

The federal judge who restricted immigration agents’ use of tear gas and called out U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino for lying under oath will preside over the new lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago accusing the Trump administration of an illegal “occupation” of the city.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis took on the case Thursday at the request of state lawyers, who argued their new lawsuit is related to a separate case filed last fall. That case led to her historic order in November limiting the use of force by agents conducting immigration enforcement here.

Ellis also ordered Bovino into her courtroom in October as part of that case, forced him to answer questions under oath in a closed-door deposition, and demanded answers when tear gas began billowing from Little Village to Lake View.

She famously read Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago” before handing down her November order.

Now, she’ll continue to play a key role as local officials challenge the Trump administration at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in 2026. Federal officials have warned that the deportation campaign known as "Operation Midway Blitz” is not over. Bovino recently posted “we’re gonna be here for years” on social media.

State lawyer Vikas Didwania, a former federal prosecutor, told Ellis Thursday that the facts in the new lawsuit “are intertwined with the facts and incidents that form the core” of the lawsuit brought last fall by protesters, clergy and media organizations.

“The fact that this court is so intimately familiar with all those facts, I think really drives home why judicial economy would be tremendously served here,” Didwania told her.

Ellis agreed, noting that she already “has a substantial familiarity” with the deportation campaign and the policies of the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol.

“This court is already up to speed on many of the facts and issues that will arise in the state and city case,” Ellis said, “and having another judge get up to speed on the issues would be inefficient.”

Justice Department lawyer Peter Goldstone objected to the bid to have the case moved to Ellis’ courtroom. He called the state’s new lawsuit “ambitious and comprehensive,” but he insisted there are different legal theories at play.

President Barack Obama appointed Ellis to the bench in 2013. Before the reassignment to Ellis, the new lawsuit had been assigned to U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis, a 2024 appointee of President Joe Biden’s.

The new lawsuit is the broadest legal challenge yet to “Operation Midway Blitz.” In addition to claims of excessive force, it complains of roving patrols, the feds’ capture of biometric data, warrantless arrests, immigration enforcement at “sensitive locations” like courthouses and schools, the agents’ swapping of license plates and their trespassing on private property.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit handled last fall by Ellis appears to be nearing an end. The lawyers who filed it are seeking to have it voluntarily dismissed in an apparent strategic move to avoid a three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

That panel blocked Ellis’ use-of-force order and signaled plans to narrow it, noting that the Trump administration was likely to succeed on the merits of the case.

Such a ruling could tie the hands of Ellis and other lower-court judges in the future.

Ellis declined to formally dismiss that lawsuit last week after the fatal shooting of Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. The judge cited her responsibility to protect members of the class she certified in the case and said she wanted to do more research.

“It doesn’t give me much comfort, in reading news reports, that someone — who, in some news reports anyway, was described as a legal observer — was shot yesterday in Minneapolis,” Ellis said on Jan. 8.

She told the lawyers to return to her courtroom Jan. 22. On Thursday, she said her decision to take on the new lawsuit will “not delay the court’s decision on a motion for dismissal” in the earlier one.

The Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Newspaper Guild — which represents journalists at the Chicago Sun-Times — are among the plaintiffs in the case filed last fall.

Neither the reporter nor editors who worked on this story — including some represented by the Newspaper Guild — have been involved in the lawsuit described in this article.