Border patrol chief reprimanded for lying claims shots were fired at immigration officers in Chicago | Trump administration

A border patrol chief claimed on Saturday that his agents came under fire in Chicago while conducting immigration enforcement operations, just two days after a federal judge said that he had lied to her about having been struck by a rock during a previous confrontation with protesters in the city.

Gregory Bovino, the border patrol chief and frequent Fox News guest who has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, said on social media that his agents had been “shot at”, and subjected to “vehicular assaults, physical assaults, impeding, violent mobs, vehicular blockades”, for a number of hours.

In a written statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that border patrol agents were “conducting immigration enforcement operations near 26th Street and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, when an unknown male driving a black Jeep fired shots at agents and fled the scene”.

The agency said that the “Chicago Police Department was called for assistance and cleared the scene. The shooter and vehicle remain at large, and this is a dynamic situation.”

Chicago police said they responded but found no signs of anyone having been struck by gunfire where the alleged shooting took place. “There are no reports of anyone struck by gunfire,” the Chicago police said in a statement.

According to the police, one officer was in good condition after being struck by a vehicle during the operation, and the driver was ticketed.

No video evidence has yet surfaced of the alleged shooting, but social media clips and news photographs did show heavily armed agents in camouflage, including Bovino, confronting protesters, deploying tear gas and detaining people in the city’s Little Village neighborhood.

For nearly two hours, the Chicago Tribune reported, protesters trailed a border patrol convoy, documenting its movements through residential streets. According to local organizers, at least six people were detained, including US citizens who were protesting the operation.

On Thursday, a US district judge in Chicago, Sara Ellis, said that Bovino had lied about an incident in late October in which he had been caught on video throwing a gas canister at protesters in the same neighborhood without warning, in violation of her earlier temporary restraining order limiting the use of force.

“Mr Bovino and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had been hit by a rock in the head before throwing the tear gas, but video evidence disproves this. And he ultimately admitted he was not hit until after he threw the tear gas,” Ellis said on Thursday, according to ABC News.

Tricia McLaughlin, a homeland security spokesperson, had also claimed last month in a post on X that Bovino had been hit in the head with a rock.

In September, a Los Angeles protester charged with assaulting a border patrol agent in June was acquitted and federal officers were accused in court of lying about the incident.

Border patrol officers and prosecutors had alleged that Brayan Ramos-Brito, a US citizen, had struck an agent during a chaotic protest on 7 June. But footage from a witness, which the Guardian published days after the incident, showed an agent forcefully shoving Ramos-Brito. The footage did not capture the demonstrator assaulting the officer.

Bovino was one of four border patrol agents who testified as witnesses, but was the only one to say he saw the alleged assault by Ramos-Brito, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Bovino has previously faced scrutiny for making false and misleading statements. He defended a major immigration sweep in January by claiming agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records, but documents showed that 77 out of 78 people taken into custody during the operation had no prior record with the agency, a CalMatters investigation revealed.

And in June, while defending the arrest of a US citizen in a high-profile case, Bovino falsely claimed on social media that the man had been charged with assaulting an officer.

“Over the past two months, we’ve seen an increase in assaults and obstruction targeting federal law enforcement,” DHS said in a statement posted on X. Raids across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, including one at a daycare center this week, have led to protests and violent arrests.

More than a dozen suburban Chicago mothers were arrested on Friday outside an immigration detention facility in Broadview, a suburb west of Chicago that has been a flashpoint for anger around Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz”. The immigration crackdown in Chicago began in September, with the stated purpose of pursuing dangerous criminals without the legal right to reside in the US. It has resulted in more than 3,000 arrests, according to the DHS. Those arrests have included US citizens and people with no criminal history.

Sam Levin and Reuters contributed reporting