meetings

CHICAGO — A judge on Tuesday ordered a senior U.S. Border Patrol official to meet her each evening to discuss the government’s immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, an extraordinary step following weeks of street confrontations, tear gas volleys and complaints of excessive force.

“Yes, ma’am,” responded Greg Bovino, who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps in America’s big cities.

Bovino got an earful from U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis as soon as he settled into the witness chair in his green uniform.

Ellis quickly expressed concerns about video and other images from an illegal immigration drive that has produced more than 1,800 arrests since September. The hearing is the latest in a lawsuit by news outlets and protesters who say agents have used too much force, including tear gas, during demonstrations.

“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress. … My role is simply to see that in the enforcement of those laws, the agents are acting in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution,” the judge said.

Bovino is chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, Calif., one of nine sectors on the Mexican border.

The judge wants him to meet her in person daily at 6 p.m. “to hear about how the day went.”

“I suspect, that now knowing where we are and that he understands what I expect, I don’t know that we’re going to see a whole lot of tear gas deployed in the next week,” Ellis said.

Ellis zeroed in on reports that Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade with tear gas on the city’s Northwest Side over the weekend. Neighbors had gathered in the street as someone was arrested.

“Those kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “And I can only imagine how terrified they were. These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.”

Ellis ordered Bovino to produce all use-of-force reports since Sept. 2 from agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz. She first demanded them by the end of Tuesday, but Bovino said it would be “physically impossible” because of the “sheer amount.”

Lawyers for the government have repeatedly defended the actions of agents, including those from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and told the judge that videos and other portrayals have been one-sided.

Besides his court appearance, Bovino still must sit for a deposition, an interview in private, with lawyers from both sides.

The judge has already ordered agents to wear badges, and she’s banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She subsequently required body cameras after the use of tear gas raised concerns that agents were not following her initial order.

Ellis set a Friday deadline for Bovino to get a camera and to complete training.

Attorneys representing a coalition of news outlets and protesters claim he violated the judge’s use-of-force order in Little Village, a Mexican enclave in Chicago, and they filed an image of him allegedly “throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.”

Over the weekend, masked agents and unmarked SUVs were seen on Chicago’s wealthier, predominantly white North Side, where video showed chemical agents deployed in a street. Agents have been recorded using tear gas several times over the past few weeks.

Bovino also led the immigration operation in Los Angeles in recent months, leading to thousands of arrests. Agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and patrolled MacArthur Park on horseback.

Fernando writes for the Associated Press.

Bilateral meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterparts were a regular occurrence early in his 25-year tenure.

But as tensions mounted between Moscow and the West following the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and allegations of meddling with the 2016 U.S. elections, those meetings became increasingly less frequent, and their tone appeared less friendly.

Here’s what to know about past meetings between Russian and U.S. presidents:

Putin and Joe Biden

Putin and Biden met only once while holding the presidency –- in Geneva in June 2021.

Russia was massing troops on the border with Ukraine, where large swaths of land in the east had long been occupied by Moscow-backed forces; Washington repeatedly accused Russia of cyberattacks. The Kremlin was intensifying its domestic crackdown on dissent, jailing opposition leader Alexei Navalny months earlier and harshly suppressing protests demanding his release.

Putin and Biden talked for three hours, with no breakthroughs. They exchanged expressions of mutual respect, but firmly restated their starkly different views on various issues.

They spoke again via videoconference in December 2021 as tensions heightened over Ukraine. Biden threatened sanctions if Russia invaded, and Putin demanded guarantees that Kyiv wouldn’t join NATO –- something Washington and its allies said was a nonstarter.

Another phone call between the two came in February 2022, less than two weeks before the full-scale invasion. Then the high-level contacts stopped cold, with no publicly disclosed conversations between them since the invasion.

Putin and Donald Trump

Putin met President Trump six times during the American’s first term — at and on the sidelines of G20 and APEC gatherings — but most famously in Helsinki in July 2018. That’s where Trump stood next to Putin and appeared to accept his insistence that Moscow had not interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and openly questioned the firm finding by his own intelligence agencies.

His remarks were a stark illustration of Trump’s willingness to upend decades of U.S. foreign policy and rattle Western allies in service of his political concerns.

“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said. “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Since Trump returned to the White House this year, he and Putin have had about a half-dozen publicly disclosed telephone conversations.

Putin and Barack Obama

President Obama met with Putin nine times, and there were 12 more meetings with Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president in 2008-12. Putin became prime minister in a move that allowed him to reset Russia’s presidential term limits and run again in 2012.

Obama traveled to Russia twice — once to meet Medvedev in 2009 and again for a G20 summit 2013. Medvedev and Putin also traveled to the U.S.

Under Medvedev, Moscow and Washington talked of “resetting” Russia-U.S. relations post-Cold War and worked on arms control treaties. U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton famously presented a big “reset” button to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in 2009. One problem: instead of “reset” in Russian, they used another word meaning “overload.”

After Putin returned to office in 2012, tensions rose between the two countries. The Kremlin accused the West of interfering with Russian domestic affairs, saying it fomented anti-government protests that rocked Moscow just as Putin sought reelection. The authorities cracked down on dissent and civil society, drawing international condemnation.

Obama canceled his visit to Moscow in 2013 after Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower.

In 2014, the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies responded with crippling sanctions. Relations plummeted to the lowest point since the Cold War.

The Kremlin’s 2015 military intervention in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad further complicated ties. Putin and Obama last met in China in September 2016, on the sidelines of a G20 summit, and held talks focused on Ukraine and Syria.

Putin and George W. Bush

Putin and President Bush met 28 times during Bush’s two terms, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. They hosted each other for talks and informal meetings in Russia and the U.S., met regularly on the sidelines of international summits and forums, and boasted of improving ties between onetime rivals.

After the first meeting with Putin in 2001, Bush said he “looked the man in the eye” and “found him very straightforward and trustworthy,” getting “a sense of his soul.”

In 2002, they signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty -– a nuclear arms pact that significantly reduced both countries’ strategic nuclear warhead arsenal.

Putin was the first world leader to call Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attack, offering his condolences and support, and welcomed the U.S. military deployment on the territory of Moscow’s Central Asian allies for action in Afghanistan.

He has called Bush “a decent person and a good friend,” adding that good relations with him helped find a way out of “the most acute and conflict situations.”

Putin and Bill Clinton

President Clinton traveled to Moscow in June 2000, less than a month after Putin was inaugurated as president for the first time in a tenure that has stretched to the present day.

The two had a one-on-one meeting, an informal dinner, a tour of the Kremlin from Putin, and attended a jazz concert. Their agenda included discussions on arms control, turbulence in Russia’s North Caucasus region, and the situation in the Balkans.

At a news conference the next day, Clinton said Russia under Putin “has the chance to build prosperity and strength, while safeguarding that freedom and the rule of law.”

The two also met in July of that same year at the G8 summit in Japan, in September — at the Millennium Summit at the U.N. headquarters in New York, and in November at the APEC summit in Brunei.

In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last year, Putin said he asked Clinton in 2000 if Russia could join NATO, and the U.S. president reportedly said it was “interesting,” and, “I think yes,” but later backtracked and said it “wasn’t possible at the moment.” Putin used the anecdote to illustrate his point about the West’s hostility toward Russia, “a big country with its own opinion.”

“We just realized that they are not waiting for us there, that’s all. OK, fine,” he said.

Litvinova writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Yuras Karmanau contributed to this report.

Speakers at Los Angeles City Council meetings will be banned from using the N-word and the C-word, the council decided Wednesday.

The ban comes after years of tirades by a few speakers who attack officials’ weight, sexual orientation or gender and who sometimes use racial slurs.

Speakers will now receive a warning for using either word — or any variation of the word. If they continue with the offensive language, they will be removed from the room and possibly banned from future meetings.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is Black, has said that the use of the words during public comment has discouraged people from coming to meetings.

“It is language that, anywhere outside this building where there aren’t four armed guards, would get you hurt if you said these things in public,” he said earlier this year.

The council’s decision to ban the words could be challenged in court, with some legal scholars saying it could violate speakers’ 1st Amendment free speech rights.

In 2014, the city paid $215,000 to a Black man who was ejected from a meeting for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood and a T-shirt with the N-word on it.

Attorney Wayne Spindler, who often uses offensive language at council meetings, said Wednesday that he plans to sue the city over the ban. He said he will read Tupac Shakur lyrics, including offensive curse words, until he is banned from a meeting.

“I’m going to file my $400-million lawsuit that I already have prepared and ready to file. If you want to make me the next millionaire, vote yes,” he said during public comment Wednesday.

Spindler was arrested in 2016 after submitting a public comment card showing a burning cross and a man hanging from a tree. On the card, he also wrote “Herb = [N-word],” referring to Herb Wesson, the council president at the time, who is Black. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Spindler.

Armando Herman, who attended the City Council vote Wednesday, is also a frequent offender.

At a City Council meeting earlier this month, Herman said the council was trying to suppress his speech, repeatedly referring to himself as a white N-word. He also used the C-word to describe an official in the room.

In 2023, a judge barred Herman from attending in person any public meetings at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, where the L.A. County supervisors meet, after he allegedly sent sexually suggestive emails to four female supervisors. He denied sending the emails.

Numerous other members of the public have spoken against the new rule, saying it violates their freedom of speech.

“You’re so weak you have to curb freedom of speech for everyone, and you know this is going to bring lawsuits,” said Stacey Segarra-Bohlinger, a member of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council who often punctuates her remarks with singing, at the council meeting earlier this month.

“This is an attack on free speech,” she added.