CHICAGO — A lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security had people scratching their heads in a Chicago federal court hearing Friday after telling the judge in an ongoing immigration lawsuit that some 16 body-worn camera videos from agents on the ground this year have been identified as part of “Operation Midway Blitz.”

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis did a double take, asking attorney Lee Reeves to clarify — since the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign last fall. Was he certain that videos from 2026 “fall under the classification of Operation Midway Blitz?” she asked.

“Yes, that is my understanding from (U.S. Customs and Border Protection),” Reeves said. “That they have been tagged as such.”

The discussion came during telephone hearing over what records — including body cams, emails, texts and other communications — the government was obligated to preserve as part of the lawsuit filed jointly by the Illinois attorney general’s office and the city of Chicago in January alleging a broad swath of illegal actions during and after Midway Blitz.

While it may have been a miscommunication, the comment by Reeves was notable since the Justice Department has argued that the plaintiffs lack standing largely because Operation Midway Blitz was long over by the time the lawsuit was filed and there was no plausible or imminent threat of harm to citizens.

A lawyer for the Illinois Attorney General’s office quickly pounced on the discrepancy, saying the fact that DHS is still classifying on-the-ground immigration operations as Midway Blitz-related goes to the heart of their case that “things are not quiet” and the operation really never ended.

“While it may have faded from the headlines in the newspapers, it appears that the operation continued at least into this calendar year,” attorney Vikas Didwania said.

In his report to the judge, Reeves said so far this calendar year, there have been 60 body-worn camera videos that have been preserved per the judge’s order, some 16 of which pertain to Midway Blitz. He said six videos from this year were preserved for only 180 days and have since been deleted, though he said those were essentially videos of agents being trained on the equipment, not any “outward facing” incidents on the street.

Reeves also said all video footage from the nine cameras at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview has been preserved indefinitely since last November.

Ellis, meanwhile, said she wanted to be very clear with the government going forward about what evidence it was obligated to hold onto, particularly involving employees no longer with the department, such as former Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.

“I want to make sure that (Bovino) is aware that defendants have taken steps to ensure that, for example, his personal device … has been preserved,” Ellis said.

Didwania stressed that text message strings between agents on the ground should also not be deleted, since they’ve been shown to be an “important, unvarnished” look at the inner workings of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.

He pointed to recently released texts as part of a similar lawsuit in Los Angeles, where two immigration agents who participated in Operation At Large there in August 2025 were captured complaining about the brazen tactics of Bovino’s Border Patrol, which had already resulted in the issuance of a federal temporary restraining order.

“I complained about the Home Depot stuff saying I think it violates the TRO…Since then they haven’t assigned me to any of those again,” wrote one agent, who was a supervisor with Homeland Security Investigations at the time, according to a copy of the exchange in court records.

“I’m pretty sure it does, especially the 9th circuit,” responded the other agent, who was also with HSI. “I think they only know one way to operate. See bodies, chase bodies.”

After some talk about getting personal liability insurance given all the turmoil, the agents’ conversation turned to a new mission brewing in Chicago.

“Makes me wonder how much longer they’re going to last,” the second agent texted, according to court records. “They’re headed to Chicago and Boston soon and told me they wanted to bring HSI agents with them. I told them no chance.”

“If you want to go, I can put in a good word,” the supervisor responded, adding a laughing emoji.

In a sworn deposition in the case in July, the supervisor was asked about his specific objection to the tactics Border Patrol was using under Bovino’s supervision, particularly going into a high-density area like a Home Depot without a specific target for arrest.

He said the “overall aggression” of Border Patrol “seemed a little intense for like a large city,”

“I think that Border Patrol knew that when they went out to these public areas, that they were going to get large amounts of people to run and that was going to give them people to chase after,” the agent said, according to a copy of the deposition filed in court. “They weren’t just going to these locations solely to target specific people.”

The lawsuit pending before Ellis alleges immigration agents acted more like an occupying military force than law enforcement during Midway Blitz, terrorizing neighborhoods with “roving patrols,” illegally switching out license plates, randomly stopping people to question them about their citizenship, and making warrantless arrests.

The suit seeks a judicial order limiting these and other practices, including conducting immigration enforcement operations from “sensitive” areas such as schools, courthouses and hospitals, and limiting the use of “biometric” scanning of fingerprints and other personal information.

Ellis set a status date in the case for Sept. 30. He’s expected to rule on the federal government’s motion to dismiss in November.

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