* On Friday, five subject matter experts testified before the Illinois Accountability Commission at its second meeting. The panel was created by Gov. JB Pritzker via executive order in October. Author and journalist Garrett Graff on his testimony…

I was called as the commission’s expert witness on the history of problems, corruption, and training within CBP and ICE — a story I’ve covered for more than a dozen years, as regular readers of this newsletter know. To prepare, I spent the last week re-reading and re-familiarizing myself with DHS scandals and waves of corruption and mismanagement — and found myself horrified anew. […]

I also totaled up some new numbers to get at the scale of the problem:

Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005. CBP’s misconduct scandal is so long-running that today it would be old enough to drink.

In total, according to CBP’s own discipline reports, over the 20 years from 2005 to 2024 — the last year numbers are available — at least 4,913 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested themselves, some multiple times. (In 2018 alone, a single CBP employee was arrested five times.) To put that number in perspective:

• The population of CBP agents and officers who have been arrested would make it roughly the nation’s fourth largest police department — equal to the size of the entire Philadelphia police.

• Indeed, for much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

* Capitol News Illinois…

Ahead of the commission’s second public hearing Friday, Pritzker asked the commission to expand its review to include major Trump officials, including the now-ousted Customs and Border Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino, White House “border czar” Tom Homan, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.

“For too long, Gregory Bovino and his rogue federal agents have terrorized communities in Illinois and across the country, violated our people’s constitutional rights, and unleashed violence at every turn,” Pritzker said. “Bovino packing his bags cannot detract from our mission (of) accountability.”

In addition to eight named officials, Pritzker’s request applied to additional “deputies, subordinates and officials across the Trump hierarchy who may have played a role in the federal deployments.”

The commission agreed to take up that mandate, with Commission Chair and former U.S. District Court Judge Rubén Castillo signaling that the commission may recommend disciplinary action or prosecution related to the shootings of Silverio Villegas González, a father of two killed by ICE agents in Franklin Park in September and of teaching assistant Marimar Martinez, shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in October.

* Center Square…

[Deborah Fleischaker, who previously served in the US Department of Homeland Security for 14 years and as ICE’s chief of staff and assistant director for regulatory affairs,] said immigration enforcement has shifted from rule bound to outcome driven.

“Leadership communicates desired headlines, and officers are expected to lead the news instead of delivering public safety results,” Fleischaker said.

Fleischaker said public safety is not enhanced when immigration enforcement is driven by quotas and involves rapid hiring and shortened training.

“Such enforcement does not enhance public safety. It erodes trust, discourages cooperation with law enforcement, redirects other law enforcement activities, robs officers of their discretion and ultimately makes communities less safe,” Fleischaker said.

* Tribune…

The commission […] also released its preliminary report Friday which laid out issues it would like to address, such as limiting agents’ use of tear gas, pepper spray and masks that conceal their identity. The report said, for example, it would want to improve “existing federal standards for use of crowd control weapons.”

However, it offered little insight into how it would accomplish these goals. The commission is restricted by the state’s limited authority. It has no subpoena power and no direct law enforcement authority. It simply said it would be interested in hearing proposals from the public. […]

“We will have conversations with those in local law enforcement to suggest prosecutions that should be occurring even as we speak. That’s where we’re headed,” Castillo said Friday. He’s previously said “nothing is off the table” as far as recommendations the commission can make to the state.

* More…

* Sun-Times | Chicagoans continue calls to abolish ICE as worry persists over feds’ spring surge: Chicago communities remain under a “great amount” of mental and emotional distress, even as immigration enforcement has scaled back in the area, Matt Davison, CEO of NAMI Chicago, said Friday during a public hearing of the Illinois Accountability Commission. “The consequences to our city’s mental health right now are hard to overstate,” Davison said. “We tend to slip into talking about these events in the past tense. I would just remind the commission that’s just simply not the case right now for our mental health in its present state.”

* WAND | IL Accountability Commission highlights aggressive ICE tactics used in Chicago, Minneapolis: “What has become apparent to the public is that these are not just cases of excessive force, but cold-blooded killings of Americans,” said retired Chicago Police Department Commander Cindy Sam. “These federal agents are not just serving law enforcement, they are acting as judge, jury and executioner.”

* ABC Chicago | IL Accountability Commission on Midway Blitz calls for rogue federal officers to face prosecution: The commission chairman contended that if the fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez last fall during an ICE traffic stop in Franklin Park had resulted in disciplinary action, then perhaps the pair of deadly shootings this month in Minneapolis might not have happened. “Definitely, it seems we need some changes in state law to encourage local officials to actually prosecute agents who are conducting misdeeds, because it seems like the federal government is not going to do that,” Castillo said.