CHICAGO (AP) — An appeals court intervened Wednesday and suddenly blocked an order that required a senior Border Patrol official to give unprecedented daily briefings to a judge about immigration sweeps in Chicago.
The one-page suspension by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came before Greg Bovino’s first late-afternoon meeting with U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis at the courthouse in downtown Chicago.
Ellis ordered the meetings Tuesday after weeks of tense encounters and increasingly aggressive tactics by government agents working Operation Midway Blitz, which has resulted in more than 1,800 arrests and complaints of excessive force.
Bovino told Fox News that he was eager to talk to Ellis. But government lawyers were appealing her decision at the same time, calling it “extraordinarily disruptive.”
“The order significantly interferes with the quintessentially executive function of ensuring the Nation’s immigration laws are properly enforced by waylaying a senior executive official critical to that mission on a daily basis,” the Justice Department argued.
