CHICAGO — Border cops deployed to Chicago are doing their best to put a lighthearted spin on the dangerous situation on the ground.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Operation Midway Blitz has resulted in agents being shot at and met with resistance and violence daily — including being rammed with cars — as they round up gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers.
“You know those signs that say ‘This many days since a workplace accident’? We have one of those for car rammings. It always stays at zero,” one Border Patrol officer told The Post on a recent visit to Department of Homeland Security headquarters outside Chicago.
And he’s being serious, telling The Post crazed activists really are running their cars into Border Patrol officers in the Windy City since the operation got underway on Sept. 8.
And Border Patrol boss Greg Bovino says its not just the illegal criminals they are fighting, but the hostile attitude of the city and state leadership.
“When you start calling us barbarians and Nazis and jackboots and things like that, that really appeals to those weaker minded people that are actually going to act on what a [Chicago Mayor Brandon] Johnson or a [Governor JB] Pritzker says,” Bovino told The Post in an exclusive interview.
“And instead of tamping down some of this rhetoric and this heated situation that’s out there, they’re increasing it.
“Not just a little bit, but they’re increasing it a lot to, the point where people are taking their own vehicles and trying to kill Border Patrol agents right out in the open,” Bovino, 55, said.
Illinois successfully blocked President Trump’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago in order to protect immigration officials this week, which also saw Democrat Pritzker call Bovino a “snowflake” at a news conference.
Meanwhile, violence on the streets continues.
Last week, a man in a black jeep opened fire on Border Patrol officers as agents performed operations. A mob of activists also hurled paint cans and bricks at CPB vehicles during the incident. There were no injuries.
The shooting came around the time that the Latin Kings street gang issued a “shoot on site” order targeting immigration officials, according to internal communications distributed by the Department of Homeland Security.
On Oct. 6 a Latin Kings gang member was arrested after putting out a hit on Bovino.
Two days prior, an armed woman was shot by immigration agents after she rammed her car into a CBP vehicle, boxing officers in as they were under siege from an angry mob.
“The violence here is off the charts compared to Los Angeles,” Bovino said, referring to his previous post overseeing immigration operations in that city earlier this year. “[California Gov.] Newsom didn’t do us any favors. I think he called me a ‘tough guy’ and some of that, but they didn’t really go over the edge as much.”
Despite all this, Bovino says morale is high among his officers—especially when they nab a particularly bad dude.
One memorable operation occurred on Sept. 30 when a coalition of federal officers rappelled in the middle of the night from Black Hawk helicopters onto a South Shore Apartment complex and apprehending over 30 illegals — many with alleged ties to the US-designated terrorist organization Tren de Agua — along with one unnamed individual on the terrorism watchlist, according to DHS.
Last week, Bovino says, another illegal alien organized crime boss from Poland — who’d been living freely in Chicago for years and was wanted by international authorities — had been taken in.
About 50-100 criminal aliens a day are being apprehended by Border Patrol in Chicagoland, the name for the greater metropolitan area, with nearly 4,000 criminals from over 30 countries detained since the September start of the mission, says Bovino.
However, a judge ruled on Thursday that 615 people arrested as part of the operation had to be released on bail, saying they had not been given final orders of removal from the country.
“I stand in awe as to some of these fantastic apprehensions that they’re getting,” Bovino said of his officers. “They’re giving it their all out there in perhaps the most dangerous law enforcement mission in existence in the modern era.”
From residents who have been cowering under the threat of gang violence and disorder for too long, the federal agents are greeted warmly.
“You can see the relief in some of the citizens’ faces in the wards down there when we arrive. We’re mobbed in a good way,” Bovino says. “95% of the people welcome us here. It’s that five percent that you may hear on TV that call us the Nazis and that kind of thing. But we love this place.”
Bovino, who joined Border Patrol nearly 30 years ago in 1996 says he was inspired to take the role by Hollywood, but probably not in the way the filmmakers of 1982’s “The Border,” starring Jack Nicholson, intended.
“It didn’t portray the Border Patrol very well. When Hollywood doesn’t like something — because they’re agenda-driven — maybe it’s time to pay attention to it. This border thing, what’s that? It got me interested,” he said.
He then found out a lot of prolific Border Patrol agents were writing about their wild exploits in magazines like Outdoor Life and Guns & Ammo. Before he knew it, he was enlisting.
“What a colorful, adventure-oriented organization the Border Patrol has proven to be over 30 years,” he said.
