This is part our series of daily recaps of ICE activity in the Chicago region. Have a tip we should check out? Email newsroom@blockclubchi.org.
BROADVIEW — A group of veterans and free speech advocates gathered Thursday to condemn the arrests of demonstrators protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration policies at a suburban ICE facility in recent weeks.
Organizers have been regularly demonstrating outside the ICE processing facility, 1903 Beach St. in Broadview, to protest increased federal immigration enforcement in Chicago and throughout Illinois.
At least five people are facing federal charges related to weekend protests outside the ICE processing center in west suburban Broadview.
“They know that they can’t arrest us just simply for protesting. So instead, they drag us away onto their property and give us felonies for trespassing. That’s how they’re silencing us,” Demi Palecek, a veteran and candidate for Illinois’ 13th Congressional District, said at a Thursday news conference.
The brief criminal complaints allege that the people facing charges resisted arrest, threatened and assaulted officers from a number of federal law enforcement agencies who were trying to push back crowds from the facility.
The charges stem from Friday and Saturday protests, where federal agents fired pepper balls and rubber bullets, threw flash grenades and sprayed tear gas at protesters.
Despite being designed to hold people for just hours, the center has become a de-facto detention facility, holding hundreds of people in “filthy” conditions for days at a time, an investigation by the Sun-Times and WBEZ found.
Eleven people were detained during Saturday night’s protest outside the facility, including a journalist. The mayor of Broadview has meanwhile accused the Department of Homeland Security of “making war” in the suburb.
“Every week, ICE escalates violence against us, peaceful protesters exercising our First Amendment rights. At first, they just ripped up our signs, but then they started shoving people and throwing us to the ground. Then came into the mob tactics, full on tackles, dragging people away,” Palecek said.
In one criminal complaint, a Homeland Security investigator wrote that protester Dana Briggs, 70, of Rockford, refused to move out of the street Saturday, blocking an entrance to the facility before swinging and striking a border patrol agent’s left arm, “which resulted in an audible slapping noise.”
But border patrol agents’ body-worn camera did not capture Briggs swinging, according to the complaint. Briggs did not attend the Thursday press event under the advice of his attorneys, organizers said.
A video circulating on social media shows federal agents shoving Briggs to the ground before his arrest. Briggs, who was wearing a black shirt and holding a cell phone, is surrounded by federal agents who yell at other demonstrators to step back or they will be arrested.
The video does not show Briggs swinging or striking anyone before he was knocked down to the ground by federal agents.
A Homeland Security spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
A 14-year veteran of the National Guard, Palecek has been attending the Broadview protests every Friday, she said. She criticized federal agents’ lack of restraint at the facility.
“ICE has no regard for any human life. And let me be clear, these are not trained professionals. As a military member, I can tell you the way they are handling weapons is reckless and dangerous,” Palecek said. “I’ve seen ICE agents with fingers on their trigger, using real M16s and M9s, pointing them at people. They’re just trigger happy, and there is no trigger discipline.”
Over the last few weeks, federal agents have repeatedly tear gassed and shot pepper balls and rubber bullets at organizers who try to block access to the building — and the agents’ actions are affecting neighbors and first responders, said Village of Broadview Mayor Katrina Thomas said Tuesday.
“ICE has to stop unprovoked, chemical arms attacks on peaceful protesters and on journalists. This behavior is not normal. This is not Putin’s Russia. This is the United States of America,” Thomas previously said.
The newly-dubbed Department of War, however, claims federal agents are the victims in the Broadview interactions. In a memo obtained by the Tribune requesting troop assistance, Homeland Security Executive Secretary Andrew Whitaker claims agents “have come under coordinated assault by violent groups intent on obstructing lawful federal enforcement actions.”
Jesse Rojo, chairman of Illinois Veterans for Change who served in Saudi Arabia, criticized Trump’s aggressive use of federal agents and threats of National Guard deployment on American citizens.
“Our democracy is being crushed, day by day,” Rojo said,
Rojo has been wearing his U.S. Army Veterans hat and keeps a “Know Your Rights” card in his pocket since Trump renewed his vow to use federal agents to carry out mass deportations. As a Hispanic man, he worries about being targeted by federal agents, he told Block Club.
“That’s not okay. I was born here. I served my nation. I lost a year of my life trying to make this country better. And yet I live in that fear,” Rojo said.
That fear has permeated to communities of color across the city and suburbs, regardless of their immigration status, because it appears federal agents are targeting anyone who looks “Black or Brown,” Rojo said.
“This is not a Democrat versus Republican issue,” he said. “Are you willing to stand up for your democracy or not?”
A least three members of an Albany Park family were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents Sunday in Millennium Park.
That day, Bovino said immigration agents were arresting people in the Chicago Loop partially based on “how they look,” according to the Sun-Times and WBEZ.
“You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that. It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal alienage in a particular place or location. Then obviously the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?,” Bovino said.
Federal agents have arrested over 900 people during the immigration enforcement effort in Chicago, dubbed Operation Midway Blitz, the Department of Homeland Security said on social media Thursday.
The actions of the federal government, both in Chicagoland and across the nation under the Trump administration, are not normal, said Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the ACLU of Illinois. Chicago has a rich history of people exercising their first amendment rights that should not be silenced, he said.
“If you’ve lived here for 15 minutes, you know that you have a protest of some sort or another,” Yohnka said. “And it doesn’t take folks in camouflage shooting chemical agents and pellets at people to disperse them. That’s not what we do in Chicago.”
Aldermen, Activists To Call On Elected Officials To ‘Take A Stand’ Against ICE
Activists, some Chicago City Council members and other elected officials are expected to hold a press conference Friday outside ICE’s Broadview processing facility to demand local and state leaders take greater action against the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.
Alds. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) and Maria Hadden (49th) told Block Club Thursday they will be in attendance at the press conference, and said they expect other members of the council’s Progressive Caucus to join them.
Sigcho-Lopez, who represents the Pilsen area in the City Council, did not have exact details on who will be participating, but said it will be a “good showing.” Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) also said he will likely be in attendance Friday.
The press conference is being partly organized by Kat Abughazaleh, the popular influencer and vlogger who is running for Congress in Illinois’ 9th District and has been protesting in Broadview in recent weeks, a campaign staffer confirmed.
In a video posted Thursday on social media, Abughazaleh urged her followers to attend Friday’s press conference as well as reach out to their own elected officials to demand greater transparency at the Broadview facility and to stand up for the rights of protestors and undocumented people who are being detained.
“When elected officials and higher-profile people attend these protests, it makes everyone safer, and it puts pressure, not just in the public eye, but from a political and legal standpoint, on this facility,” Abughazaleh said.
Sigcho-Lopez said local leaders showing up to protest ICE at the facility is partly symbolic, but also cited several concrete actions he believes officials can take.
That includes taking permitting action — especially in response to an illegal fence ICE has installed outside the Broadview facility — filing lawsuits and asking prosecutors to investigate ICE agents who have allegedly violated local or federal law when detaining undocumented people, protestors and journalists.
“They have people in inhumane conditions … fencing that was illegally fenced off, chemical weapons deployed on residents, not only on protesters, on residents of Broadview. So it’s important that we use all the weight of the government to stop it, to make it hard,” he said.
At a press conference Tuesday, Acting Broadview Fire Chief Matthew Martin said federal officials have not responded to the village’s requests to take down the fence outside the ICE facility. The fence was still up as of Thursday afternoon.
“This is a clear defiance of local law and an unacceptable disregard for public safety,” Martin said. “We’re exploring all of our options at this time regarding the fence.”
-Quinn Myers
ICE Sightings In Chicago
Happening In The Suburbs
- The Elgin Area Rapid Response posted on social media there were two verified ICE sightings Thursday morning:
- Around 6:45 a.m., there were federal agents in the 1000 Block of Hampshire Lane in Elgin.
- Around 7:40 a.m., there were at least five agents at a Target near the intersection of 38th Avenue and Illinois Avenue in St. Charles
-Madison Savedra
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