7th Circuit temporarily halts judge’s order for daily appearances from Border Patrol’s Bovino

CHICAGO — Less than two hours before U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino was set to appear before a federal judge Wednesday evening for the first of five court-ordered daily check-ins, the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals said he didn’t have to.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis had ordered Bovino to show up for end-of-day appearances in her courtroom after the longtime Border Patrol official spent an hour on the witness stand Tuesday. During that hearing, the judge went through various recent alleged violations of her Oct. 9 temporary restraining order restricting immigration agents’ use of force against civilians, including the deployment of tear gas in four separate Chicago neighborhoods three days in a row last week.

But attorneys from the Trump administration on Wednesday afternoon appealed the matter to the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals, calling Ellis’ order for Bovino’s appearances an “extraordinary and extraordinarily disruptive requirement.”

“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 motion said.

Though Ellis herself said on Tuesday that she didn’t want to “micromanage” Bovino, Department of Justice lawyers accused her of doing just that in their motion, writing that Ellis had “exceeded (her) judicial role by arrogating to (herself) the role of supervising and micromanaging the day-to-day operations of an Executive Branch law-enforcement agency.”

A couple hours later, the 7^th Circuit granted the Trump administration’s motion for a stay on Ellis’ order requiring Bovino’s daily appearances. The end-of-day check-ins were scheduled to end on Nov. 4, the day before a hearing on whether to convert the judge’s temporary restraining restricting riot control weapons to a preliminary injunction.

Bovino is scheduled to sit for a five-hour deposition in the case on Thursday.

National Guard appeal

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled a ruling on the Trump administration’s attempt to deploy the National Guard to Chicago is still a few weeks off.

White House officials have claimed the only way to protect immigration agents from protesters that DHS officials have called “violent” and “rioters” is by deploying the National Guard. But U.S. District Judge April Perry blocked the troops’ activation in Illinois, ruling earlier this month there is “no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois.”

After the 7^th Circuit backed up Perry’s temporary restraining order on troop deployment in an opinion a week later, the Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 17.

High court justices on Wednesday requested more briefings on the administration’s request to stay the judge’s order, directing parties to answer “whether the term ‘regular forces’ refers to the regular forces of the United States military, and, if so, how that interpretation affects the operation” of the law.

The order sets a Nov. 17 deadline for the last of the briefings, indicating the Supreme Court is unlikely to rule before then.

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