In another big win for the Trump Administration and its border enforcement agenda, the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino in his feud with a woke, rogue judge who was trying to significantly constrain his ability to enforce American immigration law in the city of Chicago.
As background, Commander Bovino has been stuck in a legal feud with U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis over Border Patrol’s use of force regarding protesters who are attempting to disrupt Border Patrol’s “Operation Midway Blitz” operation in Chicago, which is targeting illegal aliens in the city in a bid to detain and deport large numbers of them.
Particularly, Judge Ellis had ordered Commander Bovino to appear before her in open court every single weekday at 5:45 pm to go over the Border Patrol’s uses of force as part of the operation, an obscene and absurd ruling that has put Border Patrol at risk by limiting how it can defend itself and would have been a significant imposition on his time, further limiting Border Patrol’s ability to deal with the situation.
The 7th Circuit found that ruling ridiculous as well, and on Friday, October 31, struck it down and ruled that Commander Bovino does not need to appear before Judge Ellis every day to go over a use-of-force report regarding Border Patrol’s activities in the city. The circuit court found the ruling, if implemented, would put her and her court “in the position of an inquisitor rather than that of a neutral adjudicator” of the facts.
Continuing, the 7th Circuit Court’s ruling found that Judge Ellis’s ridiculous demands of Bovino would also put her in a position “as a supervisor of Chief Bovino’s activities, intruding into personnel management decisions of the Executive Branch,” thus infringing upon the contis
The decision came three days after Ellis ordered Bovino to appear before her in open court at 5:45 p.m. each weekday to go over any uses of force from that day in the federal government’s ongoing “Operation Midway Blitz.” She had said the appearances would be required until at least Wednesday of next week, when Ellis is scheduled to hold a full hearing on a preliminary injunction.
Watch Bovino sound off on Judge Ellis here:
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Bovino’s legal team, petitioning the 7th Circuit for relief after Judge Ellis’s ruling, argued, “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.”
Further, it explained how the ruling would harm Border Patrol operations, saying, “Absent a stay, the government will be irreparably harmed because Chief Bovino will be required to prepare and sit for questioning in open court today and every weekday thereafter, with no stated endpoint in sight.”
Continuing, it further added, describing how the judge was getting in ICE’s way, “Every occasion that Chief Bovino is required to prepare and appear for those daily court sessions is time that he would otherwise spend carrying out the important law-enforcement functions he has been assigned.”
Featured image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anti-ICE_protest_at_the_Broadview_USCIS_Processing_Center_9_19_2025_20250919_4089_(54797754952).jpg