Criminal cases against 15 local moms who participated in a sit-in protest at the Broadview ICE detention facility likely won’t move forward.
The group of more than a dozen women from Chicago’s near west suburbs had been arrested by Cook County Sheriff’s deputies after staging a sit-in protest in the driveway of the federal immigration detention facility on Nov. 7, 2025. After a scheduled court date in December came and went without an actual hearing, the women appeared in court Wednesday morning to learn that the case had been put on “suspended leave” and would likely move no further, protestor Nikki Kidd of River Forest told Wednesday Journal.
“We got a notice in February that we had a new court date of March 4 and we were a little bit anxious,” she said. “If they were going to bother to bring us into court, you know, we were, we were concerned about, you know, how it was going to go down. I think it was, it was definitely a relief to know that, you know, they were going to recognize our constitutional rights to protest and to, peacefully assemble and speak our minds in the way that we did, and that it wasn’t, necessary to pursue those charges.”
The moms, like many other Broadview protestors, were defended in court by volunteers from the National Lawyers Guild of Chicago, Kidd said.
The decision put an end to months of legal “limbo” for the moms, whose protest stemmed from outrage over family separations caused by ICE and Border Patrol’s mass deportation campaign in Chicagoland, dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” by President Donald Trump. With those same federal policies still in place, the protesters only feel so relieved, Kidd said.
“We wanted to focus calling attention and plight of the families that were being separated and everything like that,” she said. “So, it was a bit of relief. But also not a full relief, because we know that the families that we were protesting on behalf of, obviously, they’re still dealing with it, and it hasn’t stopped.”
Kidd said she hoped the protest and the group’s on-going community activism on the topic will show that even “busy moms” can find time to make a stand for their beliefs.
“We hope to inspire people to take that next step,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be getting arrested, but I think there are so many small things that people can do, even busy moms like us, that can make a difference and can be important in how we stand up for our neighbors, and also fight for our democracy and the country that we want to see.”
