CHICAGO -- Gregory Bovino, the top Border Patrol official leading the charge on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in cities, along with his agents, are planning to leave Chicago as early as this week as they eye other locations to ramp up arrests, according to three US officials familiar with the planning.

Bovino has become the on-the-ground face of President Donald Trump’s effort to surge federal law enforcement into blue states and cities regardless of whether local officials want them there — first in Los Angeles, now in Chicago, where aggressive clashes with protesters have been at the core of ongoing litigation.

Bovino and his officers are expected to head to Charlotte, North Carolina, then continue to New Orleans, according to two of the officials, who stressed plans are still being finalized.

The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, which serves Charlotte, told CNN that neither its office nor Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are involved in planning of federal operations and have not been in contact with government officials regarding the reported move.

The sheriff’s office “has not been contacted by any (Customs and Border Protection) representatives regarding any potential operations, nor have we been involved in any planning or conversations,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expected to continue operations in Chicago.

In a statement, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN, “We aren’t leaving Chicago,” and cited a drop in street crime in the city since Operation Midway Blitz began. CBS News first reported Bovino planned to leave Chicago soon.

Potential move comes after personal rebuke from judge

The discussion of Bovino moving on from Chicago comes shortly after he was personally called out by a federal judge.

US District Court Judge Sara Ellis was angered that Bovino initially said he had lobbed tear gas at a group of protesters only after being hit in the head with a rock, but later acknowledged the assault against him came after his use of force.

“Defendant Bovino admitted that he lied,” Ellis said in a hearing on November 6, the same day she issued a preliminary injunction blocking the use of force against protesters and journalists, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat of the person causing serious bodily injury or death to another person.”

That order also requires agents to warn protesters at least twice before deploying tear gas and less-lethal munitions like pepper balls. The Trump administration is appealing the injunction and asking for its enforcement to be delayed while an appeals court panel considers the case.

The injunction from Judge Ellis came after Bovino sat for hours of videotaped testimony, clips of which were played in court. Those excerpts showed Bovino frequently butting heads with an attorney for the plaintiffs, arguing that protesters on the receiving end of riot control munitions were “violent rioters and assaultive subjects.”

Bovino also denied tackling one protester, Scott Blackburn, saying the incident captured on camera did not count as a “reportable use of force” because he was in the process of arresting Blackburn.

Ellis was not impressed with the hair-splitting. “In one of the videos, Defendant Bovino obviously attacks and tackles the declarant, Mr. Blackburn, to the ground,” she said.

President has publicly discussed other cities for operations

Trump has previously floated New Orleans as a destination for his federal crackdown, saying in an Oval Office meeting this year that the administration was “making a determination.”

“Do we go to Chicago? Do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad?” he said.

While Bovino and his team’s relocation is not yet final, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson celebrated the news Tuesday.

“Greg Bovino’s legacy in Chicago is chaos, criminality, and terror,” Johnson said in a statement.

“It is the grassroots resistance to Bovino that has forced them to retreat,” the mayor added. “Bovino did nothing to make our city safer. He will not be missed in Chicago.”

“This has never been about improving immigration enforcement or public safety — this is about normalizing military tanks and armed troops on American streets,” said a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a statement.

Asked by CNN last month where he planned to go next, Bovino said any decision would be based on intelligence.

“We’ve got a great leadership team that we work for that we look to for leadership and that would be President Trump, (Homeland Security Secretary) Kristi Noem, and all of those folks,” he said. “We pay attention to what they say, and we pay attention to what our intelligence says. We marry those up, and we hit it hard.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Whitney Wild, Dianne Gallagher and Danya Gainor contributed to this report.

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