Hanover Park, Ill., Responds to DHS Claims About Alleged Illegal Alien Cop

Yesterday I examined DHS’s claims about a Montenegrin national who was working as a police officer in the Chicago suburb of Hanover Park, Ill., and who was arrested by ICE for overstaying his nonimmigrant tourist visa. The Village of Hanover Park has responded to DHS’s assertions, and the various claims concerning the status (and authorities) of Officer Radule Bojovic are only getting more bizarre.

Yet Another Quick Recap

This case is playing out against a backdrop of acrimony between the Trump administration, “border czar” Tom Homan, and ICE officers on the ground in Illinois on the one side and the state’s Democrat governor, J.B. Pritzker, on the other.

Pritzker’s been playing both sides on immigration-enforcement since the November 2024 election, arguing both that “violent criminals have no place on our streets, and if they are undocumented, I want them out of Illinois and out of our country” and that “law-abiding, hardworking, tax-paying people who have been in this country for years should have a path to citizenship”.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) doesn’t have a “law-abiding, hardworking, tax-paying” carve-out for aliens here unlawfully (though respectfully those attributes should be baselines for all of us), however, and so while Homan is focused on a “worst first” enforcement regime, ICE officers haven’t shied away from picking up other illegal immigrants.

And with respect to Gov. Pritzker, as I’ve noted, if he were serious about “violent criminals”, he’d allow ICE access to the state’s prisons and jails to identify criminal aliens and keep them off the “streets”.

That hasn’t happened, and both Illinois and Chicago remain staunch “sanctuary” jurisdictions, impeding immigration enforcement.

In response to those procrustean sanctuary laws, Illinois and Chicago have been ground zero for ICE’s enforcement efforts of late, under the aegis of the agency’s “Operation Midway Blitz”.

Midway Blitz has resulted in more than 1,500 alien arrests, but it’s also triggered massive local protests, more than a few of which have turned violent. Pritzker has used both the arrests and the protests as a platform to hurl brickbats (and Third-Reich analogies) at the Trump administration.

An October 16 DHS press release announced that “Radule Bojovic, an illegal alien from Montenegro”, had been arrested by ICE, and more importantly, that Bojovic “was working as a sworn police officer with the Hanover Park Police Department in sanctuary state Illinois”.

In that capacity, the department claimed, Bojovic had received a “gun, badge, and a pension”.

The 925(a) Loophole

In my earlier analysis of that DHS press release, I explained that while 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5)(A) makes it a federal crime for nonimmigrant overstays to possess firearms, a loophole in 18 U.S.C. § 925(a)(1) creates an exception for firearms “issued for the use of … any State or any department, agency, or political subdivision thereof”.

In other words, an illegal alien can carry a gun provided that the illegal alien does so as a law enforcement officer, but that loophole does not solely apply to illegal aliens.

Instead, it applies to anybody subject to the firearm possession disabilities in section 922(g) (including “fugitives from justice”, drug addicts, those “adjudicated as a mental defective”, anyone “discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions”, etc.) except for those “convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence”.

In 1968, when both 922(g) and 925(a)(1) were added to the federal criminal code, Congress likely never anticipated that any police department would hire any of those people to be cops, but if it accidentally did so, both the department and the individual would be protected from criminal liability.

It’s still questionable whether many fugitives from justice would be hired as police officers, but times have changed and many of the rest are likely fair game. Congress may want to revisit the entire issue.

“Statement from the Village Regarding the Arrest and Detention of Hanover Park Police Officer”

Which brings me to a statement issued by the village of Hanover Park concerning its hiring of this alien as a police officer.

The village claims that the Hanover Park Police Department hired Bojovic in January 2025 “in full compliance with federal and state law”, with Bojovic presenting an employment authorization document issued by USCIS and the village confirming that he “was legally authorized by the federal government to work in the United States”.

The village also contends it “conducted a full background check” on Bojovic, including of his “criminal history with both the Illinois State Police and the FBI”.

In fact, Hanover Park argues, it went one step further, confirming that “based on a memorandum issued by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives on January 5, 2024” Bojovic’s status “allowed him to carry a firearm while on duty”.

I cannot locate that ATF memo, but notably it was issued under the Biden administration and therefore has likely been at least reviewed, if not rescinded, under Trump II.

That said, Hanover Park likely reviewed the ATF memo because it also found it difficult to believe someone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen or who at least didn’t have a green card could be a gun-carrying cop.

It’s still unclear what immigration status (if any) Bojovic possesses, but if Hanover Park is correct, it lets him enforce local, state, and (to a degree) federal laws, and to carry a firearm while doing so, but only if he turns in his gun at the end of the work day; otherwise, his possession of that weapon is a federal crime.

There are still many facts left to be uncovered in this case, but in the interim it’s likely best to just quote Mugutu (Will Farrell) in the 2001 comedy send-up of the modeling industry, Zoolander: “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.”