CHICAGO — Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino and dozens of federal immigration agents returned in force across Chicago and the suburbs Tuesday for a seemingly made-for-television jaunt about a month after he and scores of Border Patrol agents left town.

At least 100 U.S. Homeland Security agents or officers, including Bovino, were active in the Chicago area for its latest wave of federal immigration enforcement activity, according to a federal source familiar with the effort.

The agents made several arrests in supermarket parking lots and tamale stands — detaining a man who has lived in the U.S. for about 20 years and was described as hardworking and humble by his daughter — while goading and threatening tear gas on angry residents who confronted them.

The tense and chaotic confrontations on the Southwest Side and west suburbs began almost immediately after videos showing uniformed, masked men driving unmarked vehicles circulated online Tuesday morning.

At 10:30 a.m., a crowd had formed in Little Village, where agents detained a man at 27th Street and Ridgeway Avenue. Residents screamed, blew whistles and filmed as the agents put the man in their vehicle. Bystanders clustered up and down the street on shop corners.

One agent stood on the rim of his car door. As the agent yelled at the people, two cans of tear gas fell out of the federal agent’s vehicle, though they didn’t deploy. Another agent dangled a full-size tear gas canister out the window a few blocks away before the officers drove north. Agents also carried pepper ball guns.

Bovino, wearing a green parka over his fatigues and holding a gun to his chest, told a group of reporters and angry neighbors on a street corner that “we never left.” He ignored a man who asked him for a “rational conversation.”

“All right guys. Merry Christmas if I don’t see you again,” Bovino said, as he walked away from the crowd. Later, at a gas station in Forest Park, he said “We love Chica-ho-ho-ho” as bystanders blared their horns and shouted insults, a video on social media shows.

Little Village was the neighborhood Bovino and his agents last clashed with residents before leaving town last month.

It’s unclear exactly how long Bovino and the surge of Border Patrol agents will remain in Chicago this time around, but Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Tuesday morning that operations remain “ongoing.”

“Operation Midway Blitz is achieving what Chicago’s sanctuary politicians have refused to do for decades: decrease crime and remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who put the American people in danger,” she said.

Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday that it appears agents will be in the area for at least a couple of days, “if not longer.” He maintained he was still not receiving any direct communication or information on enforcement activities from the federal government, as was the case throughout the fall.

“They call it enforcement,” Pritzker said. “We call it harassment.”

A statement from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office called it “destabilizing” and “wrong.”

“This activity is occurring alongside a film crew, which appears to be using these raids to create content at the expense of traumatizing families,” the statement said. “The crew’s presence turns these operations into a spectacle, showing a disregard for the humanity of those impacted.”

When Bovino and hundreds of federal agents left last month for operations in other states, immigration enforcement in Chicago didn’t entirely end, but it did appear to subside.

DHS has said it arrested more than 4,300 during the two-month Operation Midway Blitz but has not offered more detailed figures on the backgrounds of detainees. More detailed data of many of the arrests, both obtained by the Tribune and as part of a federal lawsuit, indicate that most detainees do not have significant criminal records.

However, unlike when he left town in November, Bovino isn’t currently under any federal court monitoring, as both a consent decree governing “warrantless” immigration arrests and an injunction limiting the use of force against protesters and the media have been stayed pending further litigation.

U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, a Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday that agents are carrying out operations which “separate families, sow panic and intimidate hardworking people” at a time when families should be able to celebrate the holidays in safety and peace.

“These operations are a choice,” he said. “Masked agents, unannounced raids, and holiday timing are tactics designed to maximize fear.”

The convoy of agents pulled into a Menards in Cicero midday Tuesday. About 10 cars drove in circles around the parking lot for several minutes while carloads of protesters followed on their tail, blowing their horns. One agent smiled and waved out of his vehicle’s open window. Bewildered shoppers looked on from the front of the store.

About 10 minutes later, agents detained someone driving a gray Cadillac on Cicero Avenue. An agent told protesters, who were honking amid hindered traffic, that “if you block us in, the same thing is gonna happen to you.”

Arrest of elderly tamale vendor

Earlier in the morning, agents arrested a tamale vendor who regularly set up at 47th Street and Hermitage Avenue in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, according to witnesses and the man’s daughter.

The vendor, Federico Diaz, has lived in Chicago for about 20 years and had been selling tamales for years, his daughter Alejandra Diaz told the Tribune. The two would get together each evening to prepare the tamales, then he would set up outside a Huntington Bank to “humbly” make a living, she said.

“But bills don’t wait,” she said, and he had retaken his familiar post despite heart problems.

Andres Martinez, an employee at a nearby auto parts shop, said the vendor, who he described as an elderly, fragile man, had been selling tamales at that corner for more than two years and was well known in the community.

“I bought tamales from him maybe last week,” Martinez said.

He said a young woman approached him and his coworkers asking if they could help secure the vendor’s cart, which was left behind with tamales and champurrado in a green and orange cooler.

“Minutes after that, we started hearing whistles and car horns,” Martinez said. “We noticed they were in a white SUV, and another civilian vehicle was honking right behind them to alert neighbors.”

The agents also targeted a Teamsters picket line near Midway International Airport Tuesday morning, according to a representative for the union.

Nico Coronado, an attorney for Teamsters Local 705, said Border Patrol agents showed up to the picket line at 5507 S. Archer Ave. and asked workers — most of whom are Latino, and many of whom are immigrants — for identification. Coronado said he did not believe any workers were detained.

A representative for Mauser did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.

Federal agents arrested a man in his gangway and disrupted a holiday food giveaway being done by a nonprofit, said Marcela Rodriguez, executive director at Enlace Chicago, at a hastily arranged news conference in Little Village Tuesday afternoon where elected officials and neighborhood leaders condemned the day’s raids.

While conducting operations, Bovino walked up to the Enlace Chicago office, smiled and waved, which Rodriguez called a “clear intimidation tactic.”

Another arrest appeared to take place in a Walmart parking lot in Cicero, according to Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and a video posted to social media.

Return to Chicago

Volunteers that respond to immigration arrests began circulating rumors early this week that a surge in Border Patrol agents would happen in Chicago this week. DHS spokespeople originally declined to discuss the operation for “operational security purposes.”

Operation Midway Blitz began the first weekend of September. When it tapered off in Chicago last month, leaving in its wake court battles and communities left to face a new normal, the roving immigration crackdown briefly went to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then moved to New Orleans.

Multiple officials have cautioned against assuming the Trump administration’s focus has entirely moved elsewhere, however.

Brandon Lee, a spokesperson for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said the administration made it clear that they would “bring their violence back to our communities.” He asked residents to remain vigilant, look out for their neighbors and call the Family Support Hotline at 855-435-7693.

“Multiple neighbors and family members in Cicero, Little Village, Brighton Park and Back of the Yards have been abducted today alone,” said Rey Wences, senior director of deportation defense at ICIRR, in a news release. “While Trump orders his minions to attack our communities to distract from his hateful, horrific, and increasingly fascist agenda, the harm on our families and neighbors is real.”

Pritzker, speaking before reporters at an unrelated news conference in Union Station Tuesday, invited Bovino to testify at the first planned meeting this week of the Illinois Accountability Commission, a group he’s said will track and scrutinize the administration’s recent enforcement actions.

In general, the governor said the state is in a “much better position” to respond to the raids than a few months ago, citing for example recent legislation that protects certain people from civil arrests near courthouses, among other relatively narrow immigration-related provisions.

Still, he acknowledged litigation over federal actions is ongoing.

“We don’t know what the final results of some of these things will be, but we’re much better off than we were back in August,” Pritzker said.

The governor continued to encourage bystanders to post videos of federal agents’ activities and said he was proud of residents’ tracking the raids so far.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood also warned the crackdown wasn’t over after she was granted special access to the federal government’s immigration processing center in west suburban Broadview.

Underwood — the top Democrat of the congressional subcommittee that oversees the budgets ICE, Border Patrol and other agencies within DHS — said ICE is looking to “probably triple” the size of the staff at its Broadview facility and Chicago field office “by January.”

In the past month, smaller immigration enforcement operations continued in the city. Two days before Thanksgiving, federal immigration agents detained an Uptown man on his way to work. The arrest came after the man, a Kurdish immigrant, and his wife breathed a sigh of relief thinking the crackdown was starting to let up.

Earlier this month, ahead of a scheduled visit to Chicago by Homeland Security Kristi Noem, at least three people were detained in the west suburbs in a sudden burst of aggressive action.

And just over a week ago, federal immigration agents deployed tear gas and pepper spray on a crowd that gathered to protest a prolonged arrest in Elgin. DHS has maintained the man arrested is a suspected member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, an accusation his family and advocates have denied.

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(Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner, Talia Soglin, Olivia Olander, Gregory Royal Pratt, Jason Meisner and The Aurora Beacon-News’ R. Christian Smith contributed to this story.)

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