Federal agents fired baton rounds, tear gas and other less-lethal ammunition Friday morning at about 200 people gathered outside an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview to protest the Trump administration’s continued crackdown on illegal immigration.
The standoff marked the third consecutive Friday in which agents and protesters have faced off outside the west suburban facility, where the agency holds recently detained undocumented immigrants. The building has become a flash point for opponents of Operation Midway Blitz, which Department of Homeland Security officials say has resulted in more than 550 arrests in the Chicago-area, and a place for political opponents of the Trump administration to see and be seen protesting.
The federal government erected a large metal fence around the low-slung brick building earlier this week after protests on Sept. 19 resulted in agents hurling copious amounts of tear gas, pepper balls and flash-bangs at a protesters who were trying to block vehicles’ progress in and out of the drive. Despite the Broadview fire department’s demand to take the fence down, it was still up Friday morning. Protesters responded by blocking the intersection of Harvard Avenue and 25th Street beginning around 6 a.m., and slowly pushed down Harvard toward the fenced-off building over the course of about three hours.
Around 7:45 a.m., a black SUV apparently associated with ICE rounded the corner and turned down Harvard street. Protesters surrounded the vehicle, banging on the windows, throwing plushy toys and yelling “shame!” as the driver pushed slowly through the crowd and agents let off a volley of pepper balls into the street. Illinois State Police and several other suburban police departments, including Oak Park and Hodgkins, sent officers to the demonstration, which led to a blocks-long closure of 25th Street.
By 8:40 a.m., about 200 people had pushed up to the gated parking lot on the west side of the building to scream at agents, who periodically threw more rounds of a foul-smelling gas, pepper balls and at least one flash-bang, a device that uses a bright burst of light and a deafeningly loud sound to temporarily disorient and incapacitate targets. Agents on the building’s roof also shot baton rounds, which ricocheted off the windows of a nearby building. Baton rounds and smashed pepper balls littered the ground as protesters continued to hurl insults and taunts at agents.
As the crowd began to break up around 10 a.m., Katarina Grayson and Justin Plevaniak stripped off their goggles and respirators to sit in a patch of grass up the street and eat granola bars. The friends, both from Chicago’s Northwest side, had carpooled to the demonstration after seeing reports of escalating protests in the news over the last few weeks.
Grayson, 31, wore a Snow White costume with silver Doc Martens on the rationale that federal agents might think twice about firing on someone dressed as a Disney princess.
“My great-grandparents came here after the Mexican Revolution to try to have a better life for their children,” she said, as her voice caught. “I don’t now what my family would look like if they had been deported.”
Like many other protesters, the friends had brought goggles and other protective equipment. They said they tried their best to ignore the intimidation they felt about participating.
“We were both saying we’re not going to try anything crazy, and we didn’t,” Grayson said. “But I thought it was important to step up there. There’s always going to be some risk. That’s the whole point. There’s people in (that building).”
