Protests around a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility descended into chaos on Friday resulting in 21 arrests and four officers being injured.
It’s the latest clash at a facility that’s become a hub of demonstrations against the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the region.
Videos captured a hundreds-strong crowd and police in riot gear pinning protesters to the ground and arresting them.
Jillian Westerfield, the associate minister at Lake Street Church in Evanston, said she attended the day’s demonstrations to try to minister to detainees inside the facility. She also wanted to potentially greet some of the hundreds of people who have been ordered released from federal detention in the region, after a federal judge found that agents violated a 2022 settlement agreement over warrantless arrests in Chicago and the surrounding area.
Westerfield said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times she saw a group of faith leaders linking arms in the streets and joined in.
“For me, it was a spontaneous moment of wanting to join in with the people around me and do what we could to deliver some kind of comfort inside,” she told the paper.
She was pushed down in the chaos and suffered bruises from her fall.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office said the confrontations took place after a section of the crowd exited a designated protest zone and began marching through the roadway, which is restricted.
Most of those arrested have been charged with obstruction, disorderly conduct, or walking on a highway, the sheriff’s office told The Associated Press.
In the ensuing standoff, which did not feature any federal agents, two Broadview Police Department officers and a county deputy were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The deputy has since been released from the hospital.
A fourth officer, an Illinois State Trooper, was reportedly treated at the scene.
In a statement, Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson condemned the officers’ injuries as “unacceptable and outrageous” and called on protesters to “raise their voices, not their fists.”
The Trump administration, which has been accused of using excessively violent tactics outside the facility and holding migrants in unsanitary conditions inside it, mocked Friday’s protesters.
“Womp womp, cry all you want. These criminal illegal aliens aren’t getting released,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X. “Like clockwork, violent rioters have arrived at the Broadview ICE facility to demand the release of some of the worst human beings on planet earth. Get a job you imbecilic morons.”
The Trump administration surged federal immigration officers to the Chicago area in September as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” and has tried but so far been legally unable to send National Guard troops into the region against local leaders’ wishes.
