Oak Park Township Trustee Juan Muñoz participated in a hearing last week concerning the impact that ramped up federal immigration enforcement has had on Chicagoland.
Muñoz spoke about his experience being detained by ICE and held inside the Broadview ICE Detention Facility after a protest there last October during the HART Truth-Telling Commission put on by the McCormick Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary on Chicago’s South Side. The event featured testimony from many regional leaders on their experiences during the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration enforcement operation last year, according to event organizers.
In his testimony delivered on Jan. 22, Muñoz spoke to the conditions he experienced when he was detained by ICE during a protest outside DHS’ Broadview Detention Facility on Oct. 3, 2025.
“I’m here today because I was one of the first elected officials in Illinois to be detained during ‘Operation Midway Blitz,’ and I am also the only elected official held inside the Broadview facility,” he said.
Muñoz said he was tackled to the ground by then Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, held inside the facility for eight hours, questioned by FBI agents without an attorney and used as a backdrop for an interview DHS Secretary Kristi Noem gave to a social media influencer.
“This is when it became clear that the arrests, the photos were being used for their propaganda,” he said. “The conditions (inside the facility) were degrading and unsanitary. Minimal privacy, poor air circulation and the smell of excrement. The toilet area was filthy. People had to share shoes left behind by previous detainees because they’d had their shoes removed while being processed.
Muñoz, who spent his teenage years in rural southeastern Minnesota, said during the hearing that the tactics DHS has employed in Minnesota over recent weeks were worse in many cases than what had been used in Chicago last year, but that they were likely a sign of things to come for Illinois.
He echoed those sentiments when speaking with Wednesday Journal on Jan. 23 during a protest hours after Border Patrol’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis activist Alex Pretti.
“Those tactics are coming back to Illinois, and what are we doing to prepare for it,” he said at last Saturday’s protest.
After Muñoz was arrested last year, representatives from every elected body in Oak Park held a joint press conference denouncing his arrest and his treatment while in ICE custody.
“I’m here to unequivocally state that ICE is the aggressor,” said Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman at that press conference. “There is no emergency here, we do not need ICE or the national guard. What I need from our federal government as a municipal village president is dollars for housing, mental health, physical health, support for transgender individuals, school programs and food.”
The McCormick Seminary event was a “two-day series of public hearings that puts names, faces, and neighborhoods to the headlines — elevating lived testimony on ICE raids, human and civil-rights violations, and community harm as part of a broader national truth-telling and accountability effort,” the seminary wrote of the event. “The hearings will build a lasting public record of the real harms facing our communities of color amid the federal militarization of neighborhoods, including family separation, detention, workplace and home raids, fear-based policing, and lasting trauma.”
Other speakers during the hearing included Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss along with several local clergy members and other experts in public health, civil liberties and human rights, according to event organizers.
