An appeals court has blocked an Obama judge's insane plan to micromanage President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino had been ordered to appear every weekday before U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis, an Obama appointee, to share updates on Trump's Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.
But the 7th Circuit Appeals court has struck down Ellis' order, calling it a violation of the separation of powers, as the Chicago Tribune reports.
Judge Ellis had said the daily check-ins were needed to ensure compliance with a temporary restraining order she issued in October that restricted federal agents' use of force against crowds of journalists and sometimes violent protesters.
The judge wanted Bovino to appear at 5:45 p.m. every weekday until a preliminary injunction hearing on Nov. 5.
The Trump administration sought to overturn Ellis' order, calling it the latest instance of activist judges trying to micromanage Trump and hamstring his agenda.
The order "significantly interferes with the quintessentially executive function of ensuring the Nation’s immigration laws are properly enforced by waylaying a senior executive official critical to that mission on a daily basis.”
“Absent a stay, the government will be irreparably harmed because Chief Bovino will be required to prepare and sit for questioning in open court today and every weekday thereafter, with no stated endpoint in sight,” the administration's motion stated. “Every occasion that Chief Bovino is required to prepare and appear for those daily court sessions is time that he would otherwise spend carrying out the important law-enforcement functions he has been assigned.”
The administration's request for a reversal was temporarily granted by the 7th Circuit Appeals court on Wednesday, shortly before Bovino's first check-in.
Then, the appeals court made its order permanent in a striking decision on Friday that reprimanded Ellis for playing the role of "inquisitor rather than that of a neutral adjudicator."
The appeals court's three-judge panel said Ellis' order "sets the court up as a supervisor of Chief Bovino's activities, intruding into personnel management decisions of the Executive Branch."
"These two problems are related and lead us to conclude that the order infringes on the separation of powers," the court ruled.
Bovino has been a highly visible presence in Chicago, where immigration agents under his command have been accused of using excessive force.
But Bovino says that immigration agents, including himself, are under attack by unruly mobs.
"Did Judge Ellis get hit in the head with a rock like I did this morning? I had to apply gas this morning against people," Bovino told Telemundo last week. "Was she hit in the head with a rock? Maybe she needs to see what that's like before issuing an order like that."
