Border police constable reprimanded after lying about violent attack on his officers
By The Guardian, November 9, 2025A 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.