Illinois State Police arrested 11 people in a scuffle with hundreds of protesters demonstrating Friday morning outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Broadview processing center.
The arrests are the latest to come from a string of protests outside the west suburban facility as the Trump administration’s so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” wears into its second month in and around Chicago.
Local officials have struggled to manage hundreds of people who gather mainly on Fridays and Sundays outside the processing center, where federal agents have repeatedly deployed chemical crowd controls and less-lethal ammunition in an attempt to subdue crowds.
Friday’s confrontation was the first in almost a month to take place on Beach Street after federal officials removed what the town called an illegally constructed fence from outside the facility. Protesters began to chant around 8 a.m. Friday, in violation of Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson’s recently issued order that protests only occur between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Thompson has been highly critical of federal agents’ actions outside the processing center, declaring that “this is not Putin’s Russia” and demanding federal authorities cooperate with a set of criminal investigations. On Monday, Thompson shrank the designated protest area previously established alongside state and Cook County sheriff’s police, saying demonstrations last week “degenerated into chaos” at the expense of the village’s roughly 8,000 residents.
At the site on Friday, protesters around 8:05 a.m. pushed toward the ICE building, overpowering a handful of state police and Broadview officers. About five minutes later, dozens of state police in helmets with batons walked toward the crowd and began pushing them back.
Troopers tackled and dragged several people, including a woman with an accordion. None of the people arrested appeared to be seriously injured. All sat quietly on a curb with their hands zip-tied as legal observers shouted for their names and dates of birth behind a set of concrete barricades in a so-called media area.
A group of federal agents in military fatigues stood about a hundred feet away beside the building itself, watching quietly as sheriff’s police loaded arrestees into a van.
State police said in a statement released Friday morning that officials had issued “repeated instructions” for demonstrators to move and said that blocking the street created traffic safety issues and made it more difficult for lawyers and other third parties to get into the processing center building.
Among those arrested was a campaign staffer for Kat Abughazaleh, who is running in the Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, which includes parts of the North Side and north and northwest suburbs, Abughazaleh campaign manager Sam Weinberg said through a spokesperson. The staffer, whom the campaign declined to name but said had not been charged with any crime as of Friday afternoon, was in custody for three to four hours and then went to urgent care with a possible concussion, according to the campaign.
Abughazaleh, a progressive content creator who has been attending the protests for several weeks and has at times been joined by some of her primary opponents, said on social media that she “got hit in the face with a baton” at the Friday protest.
Those arrested were being taken either to the Broadview Police Department or Cook County Jail, state police said.
In a text message statement on the morning’s events, Thompson said “the most effective protests are those that inspire our better angels, not incite our worst demons” and said that “hostile behavior” would hurt the interests of immigrants who protesters were looking to support.
Broadview police Chief Thomas Mills and Deputy Chief Brandy Johnson could be seen among county and state police following the pushback as chants of “Say it loud and say it clear, immigrants are welcome here” echoed down the street over a makeshift drumbeat.
Behind a set of concrete barriers, a woman stood in front of a sign that read “God’s Love Knows No Borders” holding an American flag upside down.
Chicago Tribune’s Olivia Olander contributed.
