I grew up a few blocks from the ICE Detention Facility off 25th Avenue, just south of the Eisenhower Expressway in Broadview. That made my visit to the Detention Facility protest this past Friday even more surreal.
I’d read about what happened the Friday before. When ICE tear-gassed peaceful protestors for the benefit of the visiting director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.
She had watched an ICE police riot develop from her rooftop perch, next to a sharpshooter with a rifle on a tripod.
Hoping for a good TikTok video.
And then there were the troubling stories about Oak Parkers being charged with felonies by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago for “assaulting” ICE agents who had fired rubber bullets point blank.
Shadows of Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic Convention.
And then during the week, I had heard troubling detention stories. Hispanic-looking people being picked up by ICE at Home Depot in the nearby Belmont Cragin neighborhood of Chicago. Legal status irrelevant. And detained at the Broadview ICE facility in cells with a dozen other people. No beds. For several days. Never fingerprinted or photographed.
But pressured by ICE to sign some kind of self-deportation document. Or else being sent to Sudan.
And finally getting hustled into a car, and dropped during the night at a gas station somewhere in Broadview. Phone not returned.
This is America.
So I resolved to go to Broadview this past Friday. And at least be a witness. Here’s what I saw:
A friend from Oak Park handed me a wrist bracelet, the kind made at Bead in Hand in the Harrison Arts District. It had a beaded phone number to call in case I got detained.
Lots of pastors and church leaders. Lots of people singing. “Amazing Grace.” Praying the Our Father. Taking Communion. Praying for the detained and the ICE agents.
A few young people dressed in black and using bad language. Cussing out. Giving the finger whenever a car with Texas plates entered.
The Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriffs were on the closed street and strongly pushed back the first-time protesters who stepped a foot beyond the cement barriers. Their orders must have been: do not allow ICE to generate videos of “lawlessness” to support Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. The crowd stayed behind the barriers for the rest of the morning. Chanting. Singing. A little dancing.
There were strong emotions. A med student who brought her tearful mother. A father with his high school senior daughter.
Two Oak Park women, one an ICE protest veteran and the other a newbie.
A guy from Logan Square. Folks from Evanston. And beyond.
All concerned about how ICE was treating those they detained. Concerned about the direction of the country.
This is America. And it’s time to respond, peacefully, like Martin Luther King would want.