His face uncovered and wearing dress clothes in place of his military fatigues, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent Paul Delgado strode to the front of a federal courtroom Wednesday morning to testify about a cut on his leg and a slammed car door that preceded the arrest of a Lakeview comedy club manager and U.S. citizen.

The three-hour preliminary examination hearing, held in a 25th-floor courtroom before U.S. District Judge Holleb Hotaling, offered a narrow window into the operations of a pair of federal teams whose enforcement actions Oct. 24 unleashed chaos around Chicago’s upscale North Side.

“It is clear that the agents were not on a frolic,” Hotaling said after nearly an hour of consideration and a relatively rare three-hour preliminary examination into whether it was appropriate

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