# Operation Midway Blitz The [[ICE]] enforcement surge in and around Chicago that began **8 September 2025**. The [[Department of Homeland Security]] framed it as targeting immigrants with criminal records and as a crackdown on sanctuary policies; its arrest footprint covered the six states in ICE's Chicago field office — Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas — rather than Chicago alone. The operation is the factual backdrop to the domestic-deployment litigation of late 2025. Most people arrested in the Chicago area were first taken to the ICE processing facility in **Broadview, Illinois**, which became the focus of sustained protest; the confrontations there supplied the Government's factual case for federalizing the [[National Guard]], and the resulting suit produced [[Trump v. Illinois]]. Reporting during the operation documented unusually high self-deportation rates among Broadview detainees, and repeated use of chemical agents and projectiles against protesters outside the facility. > [!note] Stub — fill out > This page was created as a stub on 2026-09-05 to resolve the operation behind [[Trump v. Illinois]]. Audit and expand when convenient: the arrest and detention totals, the Broadview conditions record and congressional findings, the *Chicago Headline Club v. Noem* First Amendment litigation, the shooting incidents, and the operation's wind-down. ## Bovino and the Ellis findings Border Patrol commander [[Gregory Bovino]] commanded the operation on the ground; *TIME* reported more than 3,000 arrests. In *Chicago Headline Club v. Noem*, a suit by journalists, protesters and clergy over force used at Broadview and on Chicago streets, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis took the following steps: - **October 9, 2025:** issued a temporary restraining order on riot-control weapons. - **October 28:** ordered Bovino to report to her daily. The Seventh Circuit blocked that order on mandamus. - **November 6:** made the restrictions a preliminary injunction covering tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, flash-bangs, tasers and chokeholds. From the bench on November 6, and again in her 233-page written opinion, she found that Bovino "admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village," and that in deposition he gave answers that were "cute" or "outright lying." On March 5, 2026, after the operation ended, the Seventh Circuit vacated the injunction because the case "appears to be moot," and alternatively because of "extraordinary circumstances." Easterbrook dissented on the vacatur. The findings of fact were not reversed, and they later formed part of the basis for CBP's March 2026 misconduct inquiry into Bovino. ## See also - [[Trump v. Illinois]] - [[National Guard Federalization Flow]] - [[ICE]] - [[April Perry]] - [[Gregory Bovino]]