Bovino Gets Another Taste of Chicago Before He Leaves

But Illinois Governor Pritzker warns Chicagoans that the battle isn't yet over

Protester confronting Bovino and his poorly trained troops; Image by Paul Goyette from Chicago, USA, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; titling by author

Regular readers are aware that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Hyena-in-Chief Oberführer Greg Bovino is reportedly on his way out of Chicago and is taking his poorly trained cosplay uniforms with him.

This is what happens when cowards take on a city like Chicago, but Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is warning Chicagoans to remain vigilant:

“We’ll see what comes next, but I am not confident, I’ll be honest with you, that we’re going to see peace in our neighborhoods now. I think there are just fewer agents, and that will probably ratchet it down to some degree. But I think unless they change their tactics, they’re going to end up in court again and again and again.”¹

Fewer stormtroopers, same tactics, but the same will be said of Chicagoans, as well, who brought whistles to the gunfight, and won.

Here’s more immigration news:

DOJ records show that only 2.5% of Chicago abductees had a criminal history, according to the Chicago Tribune

So yeah, remember that thing the Department of Justice (DOJ) said about only going after criminals? Oops. Only 2.5% of those arrested during the Battle of Chicago, which the government nazis called Operation Midway Blitz, just in case we forgot the WW2 association, had criminal histories.

Per the Chicago Tribune:²

The Trump administration on Friday released the names of 614 people whose Chicago-area immigration arrests may have violated a 2022 consent decree, and only 16 of them have criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk.”

Lest you think the DOJ is being transparent, it’s not. The release comes as part of yet another lawsuit on the part of the resistance, giving Bovino another taste of Chicago that he’ll remember until he finds himself in a prison cell in a few years.

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino: “Hey, Kash, aren’t we supposed to take polygraphs before we get hired?” Kash: Nah, Dan, you’re good.”

According to ProPublica, one approach the Trump regime is taking to combat that pesky need for qualifying people for Department of Justice jobs is to just skip that whole troublesome polygraph thing.

ProPublica is reporting that Bongino, who other reports say almost nobody in the FBI likes, and two other new hires were given polygraph waivers.³ Whether this means they failed the tests or simply didn’t have to take them isn’t yet known.

Bongino’s job isn’t that important, I suppose. He is only responsible for managing 56 FBI field offices, while Kash is off visiting his country music girlfriend sensation, Alexis Wilkins, who is also an Israeli spy. I’m kidding, Alexis! Please don’t sue me! Seriously, relax. What is it with all you MAGAts and lawsuits?

It’s true, though, she sued conservative podcaster Elijah Schaffer for $5 million for saying she was a spy for Mossad or something like that. I think that’s all just part of the Goyper Wars, which I’ll get to later. Good God, these people are crazy.

The beautiful young couple posing for MAGA photographers in Hell before continuing their brief visit to the planet Earth to support the Epstein Cult; photo from Twitter X, possibly altered by author but I ain’t tellin’ for sure.

To her credit, she’s deep. Consider this tweet:

Sometimes I feel okay about the direction of humanity; other times, I am reminded that people got into actual physical altercations today over a glass honey bear cup at Starbucks.

That’s beautiful.

I digress, which is easy to do with these evil clowns.

Just to be clear, according to ProPublica, polygraphs aren’t pass/fail affairs, but rather a way to determine if the people who take them might be a bit sketchy, which would probably disqualify 99% of all Trump administration appointees:

A polygraph exam is not technically pass or fail, but a person is not cleared for approval if the examiner finds deception or is unable to reach a conclusion about the veracity of the answers given. Officials said that a person may not have technically failed the exams; the results could be deemed inconclusive, which would not meet the FBI’s standards for hiring or security clearances.

24 stormtroopers attack a car wash in Boston, abducting nine employees

Imagine hitting the ole car wash and seeing 22 cosplaying stormtroopers pour out of several heavily tinted SUVs and charge into the facility with their automatic weapons drawn.

Yep. A car wash. That’s what happened in Boston’s Allston neighborhood, according to Boston.com.

The cosplaying weirdos meant business, though, and abducted nine employees with valid work permits.⁴ Quoting the report:

“It was very intimidating the way they showed up,” Barrera told Boston.com.

The masked agents asked the employees to show their documents, but began detaining them before giving them an opportunity to retrieve the documents from their work lockers, which Barrera attributed to the language barrier between them.

Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon, who represents Allston, condemned the raid in a statement Tuesday evening.

“This is kidnapping — plain and simple,” Breadon said in the statement. “It is a horrifying chapter in the illegal and vindictive targeting of Boston by ICE and the Trump Administration.”

Watch an ICE cosplayer get arrested for drunk driving

So, this is kind of fun. Watch ICE stormtrooper Guillermo J. Diaz-Torres get arrested by Oak Brook police for rolling his vehicle up a curb while intoxicated (RVI⁵ charges pending). The good part starts at 1:23 (minutes) in. Before that, though, these poor Oak Brook police officers seem just a wee bit concerned about the arms cache Guillermo has stored in the back of his vehicle.

I also thought I heard Guillermo say he was working a shift from 6 am to midnight. I’ve heard of 12-hour shifts for normal law enforcement (maybe even the arresting officers), but that’s insane if my ears were working properly. Hell, he may have just been exhausted while trying to take the sobriety test. If my ears were not deceiving me, nobody should be carrying an automatic weapon during their 18th hour of work.

He refused to take the breathalyzer test after being asked if he had been drinking.

Meet two teens who’ve been chasing ICE around Chicago

A cool story from the Chicago Tribune. Here’s an excerpt, followed by a gift link.

At 16 and 17 years old, Sam and Ben for the past two months have made it their mission to follow, investigate and capture federal immigration activity across the Chicago area. It’s an undertaking the brothers say happened naturally after growing up in a household where social justice and civic duty were as much a part of their homeschool curriculum as math and science.

Read it by click/tapping the button:

The kids are alright. They’re involved. They just like taking direct action instead of doomscrolling.

Attorneys and Judge visit Broadview, Illinois ICE facility

Led by U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura McNally, who ordered the visit to the facility, attorneys for the regime and the opposition showed up at the Broadview ICE facility to check on conditions.

This is part of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of two abductees, Pablo Moreno Gonzalez and Felipe Agustin Zamacona, alleging inhumane conditions at the facility.⁶ The suit also alleged that detainees were forced to acquiesce to “voluntary deportation.”

The suit names U.S. Department of Homeland (DHS) Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons, U.S. Border Patrol chief Oberführer Gregory Bovino, and the acting director of the Chicago ICE Field Office, Samuel Olson, among others.

ICE and DHS, of course, denied the charges, but that didn’t stop the Justice Department’s own attorney, William Wieland, from admitting that the place was a hellhole by saying that he couldn’t certify in court that conditions were either safe or sanitary, or even that the abductees had been given due process (because, after all, they hadn’t).

To get a feel for conditions, let’s peruse a Chicago Tribune report about them:⁷

The sounds of weeping mothers curled on cold concrete floors echoed through the walls at the federal immigration processing center in Broadview, keeping Gladis Chavez awake for most of the night.

The cries came in waves, she recalled. Quiet whimpers, choked gasps and occasional prayers. About children left behind and fears of what would happen next.

Most of the women who had been detained at a routine check-in June 4 at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Chicago now had nothing but each other and a few jackets they shared to fight off the nightly chill that seeped into their bones in a nondescript brick building just off the Eisenhower Expressway.

By day three, Chavez said, her body ached with exhaustion. On day four, she and some of the other women were finally transferred out.

The west suburban processing center is designed to hold people for no more than 12 hours before transferring them to a formal immigration detention facility. It has no beds, let alone any covers, Chavez said.

Chavez became one of hundreds of people held in the facility for longer than 12 hours under the latest crackdown. Data showed that at least three people spent six or more days there.

“There were nearly 30 other women there in a single big room. Most were mothers who couldn’t stop crying. The group of men were in a separate room,” Chavez said in Spanish, speaking to the Tribune in a Zoom interview from Honduras. In the group, she said, she met women who were nursing, pregnant women and elderly women.

I doubt I need to tell you that ICE probably cleaned up its act at the facility before the magistrate’s arrival. But still, this is the kind of stuff we need to happen throughout the country as the ICE budget ramps up exponentially, thanks to the latest budget bill that more than 75 millon American voters approved when they voted for the Pedoführer because they were terrified of immigrants, the high price of eggs (the result of a bird-flu-related culling), and a brown-skinned, intelligent woman.

ICE targets DACA Dreamers

Heather Cox Richardson⁸ and Isabela Dias of Mother Jones are reporting that the regime is now targeting newcomers who used to be protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, through an executive order issued by President Obama. Democrats have tried to codify DACA into law since 2012. Republicans have been fighting every aspect of it. DACA was designed to protect children born in the U.S. to undocumented workers. Now, those people are running for their lives or are in hiding.

Needless to say, when they are deported, they’ll have nowhere to go because they know nothing about the countries they are being deported to.

This action by the regime is in no small part triggered by Transylvania migrant Stephen Miller, who has demanded the deportation of at least 3,000 immigrants per day.

Stephen Miller at night; image derived from TikTok video screenshot

I warned y’all about Miller back in September 2024 before the election, with a detailed look into his past. My warnings were not heeded:

“The term for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder.”

Those are the words of Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group, a conflict policy nonprofit, in response to the extrajudicial murders by Trump and Hegseth in the waters off Venezuela.⁹

The regime killed four more on Monday (November 14) to bring the total to 80.¹⁰ The reasoning that the regime presents, as most of you know, is that they’re killing drug runners, to which healthy people respond with, “Huh?” and/or “proof, please?” and/or “and a little due process, maybe, you bipedal barrels of slime?”

The regime’s legal beagles are reportedly telling the troops carrying out the attacks that they have no liability and don’t need to worry about prosecution because “just following orders” is a defense. Except that most legal minds say that it is not a defense, and that troops have a right and even a responsibility to refuse orders that violate international law and can be considered war crimes.

Venezuelans sent to the CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador report that they were tortured and sexually assaulted

Heather Cox Richardson is also reporting that:¹¹

Venezuelans the Trump administration sent to the infamous CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador endured systematic torture, including beatings and sexual violence.

Only 3% of those the U.S. rendered to El Salvador had been convicted of a violent crime in the U.S.

As immigration advocate Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: “We paid El Salvador to torture, abuse, and rape completely innocent Venezuelans so that [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump could claim they were tough on immigrants.”

As bad as it all is, there’s a lot of pushback. Including an election sweep by Democrats in November.

There is no sign yet that Republicans are getting the hint. Many of them are doubling down. It’s bizarre.

Retired Chicago broadcasters demand an end to stormtrooper tactics

The list reads like a Who’s Who of Chicago’s favorite news anchors and reporters from the past:

Derrick Blakley, Kathy Brock, Chris Bury, Bill Cameron, Pat Cassidy, Lilia Chacon, Muriel Clair, John Cody, Janet Davies, Craig Dellimore, John Dempsey, Mark Giangreco, Theresa Gutierrez, Walter Jacobson, Robert Jordan, Sherman Kaplan, Anne Kavanagh, Rich King, Bill Kurtis, Alan Krashesky, Ron Magers, Carol Marin, Linda MacLennan, Paul Meincke, Steve Miller, Phil Ponce, Phil Rogers, Jim Rose, Rich Samuels, Steve Sanders, Andy Shaw, Tom Skilling, Rob Stafford, David Stewart, Jim Williams, Larry Yellen, Linda Yu and Pam Zekman

In a letter to the Chicago Tribune headlined, “Federal immigration agents have traumatized us and eroded our rights,” these retired broadcasters are demanding an end to the regime’s tactics:

We are retired, but our colleagues who are still on the job have shown you a brutal and illegal campaign against fellow Chicagoans, mainly Latinos: violent abductions, gutting families, using tear gas around children, roughing up witnesses, ramming cars and even taking a day care teacher from her school.

You can read the entire letter in this gift link:

Groyper War III threatens MAGA

If you think Stephen Miller is bad, wait until you read about Nick Fuentes, the nazi wannabe who showed up on Tucker Carlson’s podcast and said the usual stupid things those guys say.

Fuentes is pretty hardcore, even for MAGA, and pretty much hates everyone. He’s racist, antisemitic, and claims the Holocaust didn’t happen. You know. MAGA.

Much of MAGA is in an uproar over his appearance on Carlson’s podcast, for reasons only they truly understand. It’s all part of a civil war many call the Groyper Wars, which is a war between two factions of MAGA fighting over who can be the most disgusting slimeball. As you can imagine, it’s an intense battle.

What does this have to do with immigration, the ever observant Ruminato reader queries? Well, these guys are all crazily anti-immigrant, to the point of having mental breakdowns about it in public settings.

Ben Shapiro, who everyone tells me is a right-wing influencer of some import, devoted his entire podcast recently to a Fuentes takedown.

According to The Bulwark’s Will Sommer:¹²

Shapiro focused most of his fire on Fuentes, playing clips of the young far-right podcaster praising Hitler as “really fucking cool” and promoting rape. And he attacked Carlson, saying he had betrayed Charlie Kirk, the assassinated conservative organizer, by giving Fuentes, Kirk’s archenemy, a platform with virtually no pushback.

Boom! Pow! Thwack!

Ruminato, of course, has had reporters embedded on the Groyper War front lines since the start of the war. One of our intrepid reporters filed this dispatch from a soldier on the front lines:

You only get this kind of reporting here. No wonder I have so few paid subscribers! Hey, nobody’s perfect. Here’s that incentive again:

That’s it for now. Stay safe, and don’t forget to buy a whistle. The ICE budget has increased about a gazillion percent, so they’ll be cosplaying in your neighborhood soon, armed to the teeth with dangerous weapons.

Notes

This largely concludes my deep dives into the situation in Chicago, but I’ll be keeping my eye on stuff there and elsewhere, especially after Bovino lands in his new target city.

Here are a few previous Ruminato articles that have been tracking ICE activities in Chicago and elsewhere.

Thanks for reading!

---

No funds for subscriptions? Or maybe you just hate the subscription model? You can still support me. Just click/tap the coffee cup. If you can’t do that, hey, times are tough. I couldn’t do it for you, either, right now. I’m just glad you’re here.

Footnotes

1. Talamonti, Jim. 2025. “Illinois Quick Hits: DHS Ordered to Address ICE Facility Conditions; Garcia Explains Retirement Decision.” Aol.com. AOL. November 6, 2025. https://www.aol.com/articles/illinois-quick-hits-dhs-ordered-145000885.html.

2. Meisner, Jason, Madeline Buckley, Gregory Royal Pratt, Rebecca Johnson, and Laura Rodríguez Presa. 2025. “Only 2.6% on List of 614 ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ Arrestees Had Criminal Histories, DOJ Records Show.” Chicago Tribune. November 14, 2025. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/14/only-2-5-on-list-of-614-operation-midway-blitz-arrestees-had-criminal-histories-doj-records-show/

3. Alex.Bandoni@propublica.org. 2025. “FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff.” ProPublica. November 14, 2025. https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-kash-patel-dan-bongino-waived-polygraph

4. Zullo, Darin. 2025. “‘This Is Kidnapping — Plain and Simple’: ICE Arrests 9 Employees at Allston Car Wash.” Boston.com. November 5, 2025. https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/11/04/this-is-kidnapping-plain-and-simple-ice-arrests-9-employees-in-raid-at-allston-car-wash/.

5. RVI = Rolling Vehicle Whilst Intoxicated

6. Buckley, Madeline, and Gregory Royal Pratt. 2025. “Inhumane Conditions and Medical Neglect Alleged at Broadview ICE Processing Center.” Chicago Tribune. October 31, 2025. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/31/broadview-ice-immigration-lawsuit/.

7. Presa, Laura Rodríguez, and Joe Mahr. 2025. “‘Dehumanizing’: Inside the Broadview ICE Facility Where Immigrants Sleep on Cold Concrete.” Chicago Tribune. August 3, 2025. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/03/dehumanizing-inside-the-broadview-ice-facility-where-immigrants-sleep-on-cold-concrete/.

8. Richardson, Heather Cox. 2025. “November 13, 2025.” Substack.com. Letters from an American. November 14, 2025. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-13-2025

9. Woodward, Alex. 2025. “‘Just Following Orders’? Experts Doubt Legal Memo Shields Troops from Prosecution over Trump’s Boat Strikes.” The Independent. November 13, 2025. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-drug-boat-strikes-illegal-b2864851.html.

10. Smith, Stephen. 2025. “U.S. Conducts 20th Strike on Alleged Drug Boat, Killing 4 People in Caribbean Sea.” Cbsnews.com. November 13, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-20th-strike-alleged-drug-boat-killing-4-people-caribbean/.

11. Richardson, Heather Cox. 2025, ibid

12. Sommer, Will. 2025. “Groyper War Consumes the Biggest Right-Wing Think Tank.” Thebulwark.com. The Bulwark. November 4, 2025. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/groyper-war-consumes-heritage-foundation-tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-ben-shapiro-kevin-roberts

‌