Videos Released By Judge Show Feds Are Lying About Chicago
Cops Be Lying: Judge Releases Videos That Prove Immigration Agents And DHS Are Lying About Chicago Protester Attacks
Every time “Operation Midway Blitz” — the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown operation in Chicago — is in the news, one can expect to learn that immigration cops are either using excessive force against protesters or detainees, targeting people violently who are not dangerous, lying to justify their actions, or all of the above. And, since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, it has become more and more apparent that the only people standing between the civilian population and an administration that pretty much just does whatever it wants are federal judges who are currently showing America what checks and balances are all about.
This is why we’d like to send out a special shoutout to Judge Sara L. Ellis of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, who has not been shy about prohibiting federal agents’ uses of force, including tear gas, and calling out agents and their Department of Homeland Security handlers out for lying about being under attack in Chicago to justify their actions.
According to ABC 7, last month, Judge Ellis ordered the release of numerous videos that show, among other things, that immigration agents and DHS officials have made a habit of flat-out lying about anti-ICE protesters posing threats to agents before those agents began using tear gas, pepper-balls, and other non-lethal yet brutal tactics to get them under control.
In her 200-plus page opinion, Ellis cited a myriad of recorded incidents — provided to her by the law firm Loevy and Loevy, who are representing protestors, religious figures and the media in an ongoing lawsuit against the DHS —where the DHS narrative contradicts what actually happened, which is just a polite way of saying what Black people have been saying for generations: the police be lying.
From ABC 7:
The following are just a few examples from her ruling.
On September 26 outside of the Broadview ICE facility, video from an agent’s body-worn camera shows a line of agents standing at least 30 feet away from protesters. Despite this distance, the agents start yelling “move back, move back” to the protesters and then shoot pepper balls and tear gas at them, all without any apparent justification, according to Judge Sara Ellis’s 233-page opinion.
She said an agent wrote in his use of force report about this incident that protesters were “becoming increasingly hostile.” However, Judge Ellis wrote in her opinion the video shows protesters were simply standing there when agents first deployed any force.
On October 4 in Brighton Park, footage shows an agent pushing a protestor to the ground. Then, tear gas and pepper balls are released. Judge Ellis wrote that only after tear gas, pepper balls and a protester was pushed to the ground by agents did protesters throw items, which “does not support agents’ use of force.”
In an incident the ABC 7 I-Team covered in Albany Park on October 12, Judge Ellis wrote that agents said in reports, and DHS publicized, that a bicyclist threw a bike at agents. But in a video, provided with no sound to start, she says it “makes clear” that agents first throw tear gas, then take a protester’s bike throwing it and multiple other protesters to the ground after deploying tear gas.
Since “Operation Midway Blitz” began in September, we have reported on a near-daily basis about the activities of immigration agents, especially during use-of-force incidents, and the way DHS representatives — usually DHS Secretary Kristi Noem or Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin — immediately release statements that claim agents were justified in their actions because violent protesters were trying to prevent them from arresting “criminal illegal alien,” which are largely not who they’re arresting. Neither Noem, McLaughlin, nor any other DHS spokesperson is ever actually on the scene to see what happened during these incidents, and they’re clearly not looking at video evidence before speaking publicly on what happened, but they eagerly take the accounts of their agents at face value, because that’s what allows them to keep spreading their propaganda.
Such was the case for Chicago activist Marimar Martinez, who was shot several times by Border Patrol agents and accused of following and ramming ICE vehicles while agents were conducting their operations. Last month, U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis dismissed assault charges against Martinez with prejudice because witness accounts and surveillance footage of the incident contradicted what agents said happened, among other discrepancies in Border Patrol’s narrative regarding the case, which the government was previously admonished for by Judge Ellis. It’s worth noting that DHS officials also accused Martinez of carrying a semi-automatic weapon, despite the fact that she only had a handgun, which she had a license to carry, and which stayed in her purse throughout the incident, as proven by video footage, witnesses, and by 911 dispatch recordings.
They’re just out here lying, y’all. And judges like Ellis and Alexakis appear to be the only ones who can hold them to account.
Of course, in a perfect world, government officials who have provably lied about government actions to cover up instances of police brutality would be held criminally liable for it. That’s what true accountability would look like.
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