Pablo Moreno Gonzalez, who was detained at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview for three days in October, was telling a judge about trying to sleep in a dirty and crowded holding cell when he began crying and pressing his fists to his forehead.
“It was too much,” he said in Spanish, through a translator, while wiping his eyes with a tissue.
Moreno Gonzalez, 56, is among a group of former Broadview detainees raising the alarm about allegedly harrowing conditions at the west suburban facility, where they say those in custody are kept from attorneys and tricked into signing deportation forms. During a full-day hearing Tuesday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, five people who were detained there in September or October offered rare accounts of a facility that has been called a “black box” by attorneys who have struggled to make contact with clients there.
Less than a week after attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the processing center, attorneys on behalf of the detainees asked U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman to allow lawyers confidential access to their clients and issue a restraining order prohibiting the government from holding people in substandard conditions. If those terms cannot be met, they argued, the facility should not house people for more than 12 hours.
Gettleman said he wanted to “give more thought” to how to fashion a temporary restraining order, but he spoke plainly about the reported conditions of the center, calling it disturbing and “unnecessarily cruel.” He said he will issue an order Wednesday.
“It has really become a prison,” Gettleman said. “The conditions would be found unconstitutional even in the context of prisons holding convicted felons, but these are not convicted felons. These are civil detainees.”
Government attorneys have contested the allegations raised by the plaintiffs, but acknowledged that they have not yet “fact-checked” all the claims. They argued, though, that if Gettleman issued a restraining order as broad as the plaintiffs seek, it would “effectively halt” the government’s ability to enforcement immigration law in Illinois.
Attorneys for Moreno Gonzalez and his fellow plaintiff, Felipe Agustin Zamacona, said the Broadview center operates like a “black site” where people have little access to attorneys and are coerced to sign away their rights. Former detainees testified about tiny meals, not enough water, cells crowded with more than 150 people and a lack of privacy, hygiene products and working showers.
“The government is trying so doggedly to deport people at such a fast rate … access to counsel is more important than ever,” said Alexa Van Brunt, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney. “Once someone signs away their rights, it’s done.”
The complaint, filed Thursday in federal court in Chicago, is the first class-action effort to bring accountability and relief to detainees, who are allegedly being warehoused in dirty and unsafe conditions at a building not meant to harbor people overnight. The suit further alleges that government officials systematically deny detainees their right to consult with lawyers.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Gettleman heard from both named plaintiffs, who were present in court, as well as a woman who said she was coerced into signing a deportation order which took her back to Honduras and away from her two young children. Also testifying were Ruben Torres Maldonado, whose case generated scrutiny and criticism after he was detained for two weeks while his 16-year-old daughter, Ofelia, has been undergoing cancer treatment, and immigration attorneys who described fruitless attempts to try to connect with clients in Broadview.
Ofelia attended the proceedings while her father testified.
Objecting to a restraining order, U.S. Attorney Jana Brady referenced the Illinois TRUST Act, which prohibits state and county facilities from being used for immigration enforcement, arguing that arrestees in Illinois have nowhere else to go before they are processed and moved to an out-of-state detention center.
“There’s nowhere to put them in Illinois,” she said.
Brady also denied some of the claims made in the lawsuit, arguing that there are water fountains in the facility and some hot meals.
“I was told yesterday in terms of cleanliness, the Broadview facility ordered wipes so people can sanitize,” Brady said.
But detainees testified that they were only given three 8-ounce water bottles per day and denied more water. They said the sinks at the facility had water that tasted like a sewer. They said they were given small Subway sandwiches for meals that did not appear to be properly refrigerated. One detainee said he got sick after eating one of the sandwiches.
Claudia Carolina Pereira Guevara spent five days in Broadview, until she said an immigration officer lied to her to get her to sign a deportation order. She appeared via video from Honduras, and grew tearful when talking about her infant son and 5-year-old daughter, still in Chicago with her brother.
“My children are really young,” she said.
“Do you know when you will be able to see them again?,” her attorney, Jonathan Manes, asked.
“I don’t know when,” she replied.
Agustin Zamacona testified that the facility has no privacy for detainees who need to use the toilet, which was out in the open behind a half wall crowded with people. He said he was able to lie down to sleep one night when he snagged the spot of someone who went to use the toilet. Otherwise, he said, he was left sitting or standing.
“I don’t want anyone else to live through what I lived through,” he said.
The government did not put on any witnesses, noting the quick turnaround since the suit was filed late last week. Gettleman, though, said that testimony from detainees contradicted a declaration filed by Shawn Byers, deputy field office director in Chicago. In the declaration, Byers said “bottled water is available upon request.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Gettleman said. “They can’t get water. They have to drink the rusty water out of the sink if they want extra water.”
Though he said the plaintiffs made a case for relief, he said he wants to fashion an order that is realistic for the government to comply with. On the plaintiffs’ request for inspections at the facility, he said he wanted to hold off, though he noted similar past cases have ultimately resulted in consent decrees.
“It appears to me we wouldn’t even be here today if the level of immigration enforcement had remained as it was in the past,” he said, noting the facility was clearly built to accommodate fewer people.
The complaint alleges a series of abuses, including medical neglect, overcrowded cells and lack of adequate food and hygiene products, that have grown worse during the Operation Midway Blitz raids.
In the two-story building, detainees are forced to sleep on plastic chairs or the concrete floor, the complaint says.
Officers are also coercing people to sign documents that relinquish their rights, according to the suit, as officials try to deport them without going before an immigration judge.
“By blocking access to detainees inside Broadview, Defendants have created a black box in which to disappear people from the U.S. justice and immigration systems,” the complaint alleges.
There are four small holding rooms at the facility, according to the lawsuit, and sometimes there is not enough room for detainees to lie on the floor as dozens if not more than 100 people are packed in for days on end. One woman said the detainees were confined in cells “like a pile of fish.”
One inmate became ill — “suffering from numbness in her lower body, an inability to feel her legs, and vomiting” — but was not seen by a doctor and ICE refused to take her to a medical facility, according to the lawsuit. The detainee also saw one man who “appeared to have suffered a heart attack” but officers “laughed at the man and made light of his medical condition,” the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order that asks for a set of baseline conditions for all detainees, including access to attorneys, clean bedding, adequate hygiene products, at least three nutritionally adequate meals per day and other requirements.
