28 Oct 2025

Border Patrol official Bovino due in court to answer questions about Chicago immigration crackdown

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By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — A senior Border Patrol official who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles and Chicago is due in court Tuesday to take questions about the enforcement operation in the Chicago area, which has produced more than 1,800 arrests and complaints of excessive force.

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The hearing comes after a judge earlier this month ordered uniformed immigration agents to wear body cameras, the latest step in a lawsuit by news outlets and protesters who say federal agents used excessive force, including using tear gas, during protests against immigration operations.

Greg Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, one of nine sectors on the Mexican border, is himself accused of throwing tear gas canisters at protesters.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis initially said agents must wear badges, and she banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She later said she was concerned agents were not following her order after seeing footage of street confrontations involving tear gas during the administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, and she modified the order to also require body cameras.

Ellis last week extended questioning of Bovino from two hours to five because she wants to hear about agents’ recent use of force in the city’s Mexican enclave of Little Village. During an enforcement operation last week in Little Village and the adjacent suburb of Cicero, at least eight people, including four U.S. citizens, were detained before protesters gathered at the scene, local officials said.

The attorneys representing a coalition of news outlets and protesters claim Bovino himself violated the order in Little Village and filed a still image of video footage where he was allegedly “throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.”

Over the weekend, masked federal agents and unmarked SUVs were spotted on the city’s wealthier, predominantly white North side neighborhoods of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, where footage showed chemical agents deployed on a residential street. Federal agents have been seen and videotaped deploying tear gas in residential streets a number of times over the past few weeks.

Bovino also led the immigration operation is Los Angeles in recent months, leading to thousands of arrests. Agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and patrolled MacArthur Park on horseback. In Chicago, similar Border Patrol operations have led to viral footage of tense confrontations with protesters.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino holds a canister as he stands with federal immigration enforcement agents during a skirmish with protesters in Little Village on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025 in Chicago. (Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

At a previous hearing, Ellis questioned Kyle Harvick, deputy incident commander with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Shawn Byers, deputy field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about their agencies’ use of force policies and the distribution of body cameras. Harvick said there are about 200 Border Patrol employees in the Chicago area, and those who are part of Operation Midway Blitz have cameras. But Byers said more money from Congress would be needed to expand camera use beyond two of that agency’s field offices.

28 Oct 2025

Castle Hills Settles ‘Retaliatory Arrest’ Case for $500,000 in Win for Free Speech Advocates

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Earlier this month, the San Antonio-area enclave of Castle Hills agreed to pay $500,000 to former city council member Sylvia Gonzalez, who had alleged that political opponents in the local government orchestrated criminal charges to silence her. (Read her full story here.) The agreement also requires officials to participate in training on First Amendment retaliation and follows a Supreme Court ruling that made it easier to sue government officials accused of using the police against critics.

Gonzalez, now 79, was charged in 2019 with tampering with a government record after she’d been involved in an effort to oust the then-city manager. Prosecutors dismissed the case, which hinged on her having placed a stack of petition signatures in a binder, and she sued alleging retaliatory arrest—a legal term for government officials manufacturing a reason to charge someone as revenge for exercising a protected right like free speech. Before it could go to a jury, the case went to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court for Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The appellate judges ruled against Gonzalez by very narrowly interpreting a recent Supreme Court ruling that had created a path for her case. But, last year, the Supreme Court said the circuit’s interpretation was “overly cramped” and threw out the appellate ruling—to the relief of free speech advocates—sending Gonzalez’s case back down to the district level.

If the lawsuit had gone to trial, jurors would have been asked to decide only whether officials decided to arrest her in retaliation for her speech, said Anya Bidwell, an attorney for the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm the Institute for Justice, who represented Gonzalez. Courts have created a host of ways for government officials to delay or avoid altogether having lawsuits against them heard, Bidwell said. That Castle Hills came to the table so quickly after its attempts to have the lawsuit preemptively thrown out, she said, shows that “The second [the government entities] actually have to go to a jury, they settle.”

In a motion to approve the settlement, council member Jason Smith, who was not in office when Gonzalez was arrested six years ago, said the agreement was not an admission of wrongdoing. “This resolution of the litigation allows all involved to focus on positively serving their communities and fostering constructive public dialogue,” he said.

In an interview afterward, Castle Hills Mayor J.R. Treviño said the city’s insurance was willing to cover the $500,000, and settling was a better option than protracted litigation. “It was just a matter of, how much money do we need to spend to be right?” he said. “It was really in the best interest of the city to be done.”

Gonzalez said the hours she spent in jail, the public attention on her arrest, and statements Treviño made about her during the litigation have “totally ruined my health.” Along with the monetary settlement, city officials agreed to send its employees to training that the Texas Municipal League will develop about Gonzalez’s case.

“I did it for myself obviously, but also for the people that come after me,” she said of her lawsuit. “I don’t want them to have to deal with something like this. And people prior to me have been dealing with it and not getting anywhere. They’ve been falsely accused and prosecuted for things that are actually just political intimidation. I just don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

The post Castle Hills Settles ‘Retaliatory Arrest’ Case for $500,000 in Win for Free Speech Advocates appeared first on The Texas Observer.

28 Oct 2025

Food banks are preparing for a surge as federal food aid could be paused in the government shutdown

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By MARGERY A. BECK and GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

Food banks and pantries were already struggling after federal program cuts this year, but now they’re bracing for a tsunami of hungry people if a pause in federal food aid to low-income people kicks in this weekend as the federal government shutdown persists.

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The rush has already begun. Central Christian Church’s food pantry in downtown Indianapolis scrambled Saturday to accommodate around twice as many people as it normally serves in a day.

“There’s an increased demand. And we know it’s been happening really since the economy has downturned,” volunteer Beth White said, adding that with an interruption in funding for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, “it’s going to continue to get worse for folks.”

It’s a concern shared by charitable food providers across the country as states prepare for lower-income families to see their SNAP benefits dry up. SNAP helps 40 million Americans, or about 1 in 8, buy groceries. The debit cards they use to buy groceries at participating stores and farmers markets are normally loaded each month by the federal government.

That’s set to pause at the start of next month after the Trump administration said Friday that it won’t use a roughly $5 billion contingency fund to keep food aid flowing in November in the government shutdown. The administration also says states temporarily covering the cost of food assistance benefits next month will not be reimbursed.

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a statement. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”

It’s the latest in a string of hardships placed on charitable food services, which are intended to help take up the slack for any shortcomings in federal food assistance — not replace government help altogether.

Charities have seen growing demand since the COVID-19 pandemic and the following inflation spike, and they took a hit earlier this year when the Trump administration ended programs that had provided more than $1 billion for schools and food banks to fight hunger.

Food pantry visitors are worried

Reggie Gibbs, of Indianapolis, just recently started receiving SNAP benefits, which meant he didn’t have to pick up as much from Central Christian Church’s food pantry when he stopped by on Saturday. But he lives alone, he said, and worries what families with children will do.

The map above shows the percentage of U.S. households in each county that receive SNAP food assistance benefits. (AP Digital Embed)

“I’ve got to harken back to the families, man,” he said. “What do you think they’re going to go through, you know?”

Martina McCallop, of Washington, D.C., said she’s worried about how she’ll feed her kids, ages 10 and 12, and herself, when the $786 they get in monthly SNAP benefits is gone.

“I have to pay my bills, my rent, and get stuff my kids need,” she said. “After that, I don’t have money for food.”

She’s concerned food pantries won’t be able to meet the sudden demand in a city with so many federal workers who aren’t being paid.

In Fairfax County, Virginia, where about 80,000 federal workers live, Food for Others executive director Deb Haynes said she doesn’t expect to run out of food entirely, largely because of donors.

“If we run short and I need to ask for help, I know I will receive it,” Haynes said.

Food banks feel the increased demand

Food pantries provide about 1 meal to every 9 provided by SNAP, according to Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks. They get the food they distribute through donations from people, businesses and some farmers. They also get food from U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and sometimes buy food with contributions and grant funding.

“When you take SNAP away, the implications are cataclysmic,” Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot said. “I assume people are assuming that somebody’s going to stop it before it gets too bad. Well, it’s already too bad. And it’s getting worse.”

Some distributors are already seeing startling low food supplies. George Matysik, executive director of Share Food Program in the Philadelphia area, said a state government budget impasse had already cut funding for his program.

“I’ve been here seven years,” Matysik said. “I’ve never seen our warehouses as empty as they are right now.”

States scramble to fill in where they can

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she is fast tracking $30 million in emergency food assistance funds to “help keep food pantries stocked,” and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said her state would expedite $8 million that had been allocated for food banks.

Officials in Louisiana, Vermont and Virginia said last week they would seek to keep food aid flowing to recipients in their states, even if the federal program is stalled.

Other states aren’t in a position to offer much help, especially if they won’t be reimbursed by the federal government. Arkansas officials, for example, have been pointing recipients to find food pantries, or other charitable groups — even friends and family — for help.

AP writers JoNel Aleccia in Los Angeles, Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, and video journalists Obed Lamy in Indianapolis and Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.

28 Oct 2025

St. Paul Parks and Rec seeks name for 5-acre park at the Heights

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The Sunisa Lee Sanctuary? The Garrison Keillor Green? The Herb Brooks Horticultural Experience? The Greater East Side Sledding Idyll?

St. Paul Parks and Recreation is looking for a new name for a 5-acre park planned for the Heights, the Greater East Side community targeted, eventually, for 1,000 new residences and 1,000 new jobs where the Hillcrest Golf Club once stood.

Bounded by Idaho Avenue, Iowa Avenue and Howard Street, the park could feature a sledding hill, overlook, dog park, community garden, playground or other amenities — perhaps even birdhouses, bat houses and a raptor platform. All of those ideas and plenty of others have been floated in two concept plans that are being refined by city staff into a single preferred concept plan.

Parks officials are accepting suggestions for a new park name at tinyurl.com/HeightsParkSurvey through Nov. 15, and they’re asking for recommendations that speak to at least one of four key factors.

The name could bear on geography, such as adjacent street names, the surrounding neighborhood or community, or a prominent nearby feature. It could be based in history, such as referencing prominent historic people or events associated with the site’s general area. The Prince Rogers Nelson Natural Roaming Prairie might fit the bill.

The name could be more functional, based on the use, services or programs provided at the site. Or it could be a memorial to an individual or individuals who made significant contributions to the St. Paul Parks and Recreation system and who have been deceased for at least three years. The Bruce Vento Memorial Acreage comes to mind.

The park would be centrally located within the Heights, which is still largely owned by the St. Paul Port Authority and spans 112 acres of land off Larpenteur Avenue and McKnight Road. It will be connected to surrounding development through biking and walking trails.

While apartment buildings proposed by Sherman Associates and the JO Companies appear stalled pending funding requests to the state Legislature, several other real estate development projects are still moving forward, as are roadways, utilities and general infrastructure.

Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity is well underway with construction of 147 mid-density affordable housing units, a project that got a boost last year when the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project brought in celebrity country singers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

Xcel Energy is building a new service center, with plans to make it operational by 2027. Ever-Green Energy is installing district geothermal energy systems in the Heights, and the aquifer thermal energy storage system will be one of the first in the state.

Roadway crews this week were expected to begin building the roadway along Winthrop Street from Arlington Avenue to Hoyt Avenue. Utility crews were scheduled to continue installing sanitary sewer on Iowa Avenue between Howard Street and Winthrop, as well as storm sewer along Nebraska Avenue between Winthrop and Howard.

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