Border Agents ‘Interrogated’ Striking Workers In Chicago, Teamsters Say

Striking workers in Chicago say they received an unwelcome visit on their picket line Tuesday from a high-profile government official: Gregory Bovino, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commander spearheading President Donald Trump’s urban deportation campaign.

Teamsters Local 705 shared video of strikers interacting with an officer in a U.S. Border Patrol uniform who appears to be Bovino. The soundless video shows the official, flanked by agents, pointing at the camera and cackling with laughter.

Nicolas Coronado, an attorney for the union, told HuffPost that Bovino had asked the worker shooting the video if he was a U.S. citizen. He alleged that the interaction was a violation of the workers’ right to protest their employer, Mauser Packaging Solutions, without fear of retaliation.

Though no one was detained, Coronado said agents asked the workers to produce identification.

“It was very clearly protected concerted activity, and [agents] took it upon themselves to start asking [the workers] and interrogating them about their status,” said Coronado, adding that the interaction lasted between five and 10 minutes.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident. A representative for Mauser could not immediately be reached.

Bovino has in some ways been the most public face of Trump’s deportation effort in U.S. cities, often appearing on television and doing news interviews about the effort to arrest undocumented immigrants. He’s been a big proponent of the controversial idea that the Border Patrol should be instrumental in carrying out immigration enforcement in the nation’s interior.

“Part of what a police officer does is deter crime by his presence. Why should it be any different with us?” he recently told The Wall Street Journal. “Everyone knows what this uniform is, especially illegal aliens.”

The Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday that Bovino had returned to the city after running an immigration crackdown there earlier this year. Video posted to social media showed Bovino outside what a Tribune reporter said was a Walmart in the suburb of Cicero.

Labor leaders around the country have warned that Trump’s immigration crackdown would have a chilling effect on labor rights, making workers reluctant to press for better pay or job conditions for fear someone would call immigration authorities on them.

More than a hundred Mauser workers went on strike June 9 in an effort to secure a better contract offer. The company announced in September that the facility employing the workers would close and they would lose their jobs, according to the union.

The incident Tuesday took place outside what Coronado said was a contracted facility where workers moved their picket line.

Coronado said the Mauser workers had been trying to negotiate immigration-related protections in their next contract, including a stipulation that the company would not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on the property unless they had a judicial warrant.

“We know in many cases, the feds … they come in with just an administrative warrant and try to muscle their way in,” he said. “We saw it as a way to partner with the company to safeguard [workers] rights. The company wanted none of that.”