Illinois Reps Outraged Over ICE-Arrested Cop Back on Duty

In solidly blue Illinois, members of the state’s conservative Freedom Caucus are harshly criticizing the reinstatement of a non-citizen as a police officer who was recently arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement.

On Oct. 15, ICE arrested Radule Bojovic, an alleged “illegal alien from Montenegro who was recently sworn in as a police officer in the Chicago suburb of Hanover Park.” 

The Department of Homeland Security alleged that “Bojovic overstayed a B2 tourist visa that required him to depart the U.S. on March 31, 2015. Over a decade later, he was still illegally in the U.S.”

After being released on bond Oct. 31, Bojovic went back to work for the Hanover Park police department, per Fox 32 Chicago.

Now, conservative legislators in the state’s Freedom Caucus are calling for action.

“You have a situation where a non-citizen is here with arrest powers over the citizenry of the folks here in the state of Illinois, and this is something that we cannot stand for,” Rep. Adam Niemerg told The Daily Signal. “We’re having a full investigation with the DOJ, with ICE enforcement, with my Freedom Caucus colleagues and myself, and we’re going to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

“This popped up, and we’ve been kind of trying to chase down the details and so we FOIA’d [filed Freedom of Information Act requests] to try to find out—we haven’t got this back yet—but we’ve tried to uncover the employment documents. Did he lie about his status? There’s more questions than we have answers right now,” state Rep. Chris Miller told The Daily Signal.

But these legislators are not completely optimistic about being able to build a coalition in the Illinois General Assembly to prevent this from happening in the future.

Why? Because Republicans in the state assembly voted for a bill allowing noncitizens whose deportation has been deferred by the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process” to apply to be law enforcement officers. 

It passed with 100 yeas and only 7 nays through the House on May 19, 2023 before being sent to the governor.

Republicans outside the Freedom Caucus “aren’t going to talk about it because they voted for it,” Miller told The Daily Signal. “I mean, this is embarrassing for the Republican Party here in the state of Illinois, and it’s just another example of the lack of leadership we have at the core of the Illinois Republican Party, and particularly in the House of Representatives.”

Miller continued, “It’s a disaster, and these guys can’t talk about it because they’re too proud to admit that they made a bad vote and made a mistake, and so they just want this to go away, and I doubt that they’re all that happy that it’s getting the exposure that it is.”

Niemerg is more hopeful about his party, telling The Daily Signal, “I know that the Republican caucus can unite around this. We’ve had some issues within the Republican caucus trying to get Republicans to unite around the illegal immigration issues. It’s been a little bit of a battle that I’ve been a little bit frustrated with.”

He suggested some Democrat legislators might come on board with opposing the policies. “As far as the Democrats go, yes, the moderate Democrats in some swing districts that are not liking some of this policy coming out of Gov. JB Pritzker,” he said. “You have an election cycle coming up for the Democrats in 2026.”

When contacted, the Hanover Park Police Department directed The Daily Signal to reach Deputy Chief Victor DiVito, who did not respond to voicemail messages.

However, the department previously told reporters, “Given that [Bojovic’s] bond was not contested and he remains authorized to work by the federal government, the Hanover Park Police Department determined that he may return to work.”

“The bottom line is that all information we received from the federal government indicated that Officer Bojovic is legally authorized to work in the United States as a police officer. Clearly, without that authorization, the Village would not have hired him,” the department said. “Additionally, the Village has not received any notice from any federal or state agency that his work authorization status has ever been revoked.”

The Daily Signal contacted the office of Illinois Republican Minority Leader of the House of Representatives Tony McCombie for response to the Freedom Caucus members’ remarks on the party at large but did not receive a response.

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