At least 11 people were taken into custody outside the Broadview Ice detention center in the Chicago area after heated confrontations between Illinois state police and protesters on Friday.
Authorities had instructed demonstrators to remain in designated “protest zones”, but tensions escalated when officers moved to clear the roadway.
According to the Chicago Tribune, at about 8am, protesters advanced toward the building. Within minutes, dozens of troopers equipped with helmets and batons moved in to push the crowd back. Officers tackled and dragged several individuals. Much of the clash was captured on video and posted to social media.
At one point, protesters tried to intervene as a fellow demonstrator was detained. Later in the day, groups blew whistles at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entering and leaving the facility.
As arrests took place, chants of: “Who do you protect?” echoed through the crowd during tense exchanges with police, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Protester and congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh voiced frustration over the restrictions. “A free speech zone implies that everywhere else is not a free speech zone,” she told the Associated Press. Abughazaleh said she was struck in the face with a baton and witnessed an officer push a woman to the ground.
The Broadview facility has been the scene of recurring unrest in recent weeks. Federal agents have previously used teargas and other chemical agents on protesters and journalists. Illinois state police reported that some participants blocked a nearby street on Friday and refused to move to the authorized protest area.
Local officials have faced mounting challenges managing hundreds of demonstrators who gather outside the detention center, mainly on Fridays and Sundays. Federal agents have repeatedly used chemical irritants and so-called “less-lethal” rounds to disperse crowds.
Protests began around 8am Friday, appearing to violate the recent directive of Broadview’s mayor, Katrina Thompson, limiting demonstrations to the hours between 9am and 6pm.
Thompson has been outspoken in her criticism of federal agents’ conduct, saying, “This is not Putin’s Russia,” and calling on federal officials to cooperate with ongoing criminal investigations.
On Monday, Thompson reduced the size of the designated protest area, an arrangement previously coordinated with state and county law enforcement, citing that last week’s demonstrations “degenerated into chaos” and disrupted the village’s 8,000 residents.
Friday’s clash followed a court order issued a day earlier requiring federal agents in Illinois to wear body cameras during immigration operations, after multiple incidents involving pepper balls, smoke grenades and teargas against protesters and local police.
JB Pritzker, Illinois’s governor, who has criticized the deployment of federal forces to the state, praised the ruling.
“The idea that there’s any justification for people tossing teargas in the context of people’s protests, I think the judge reacted to that properly by ordering that now the federal agents are required to have body cameras on them because they clearly lie about what goes on,” Pritzker said.
The Trump administration targeted Chicago with federal law enforcement in August, falsely claiming there had been a rise in crime in the city in recent years. Since then, there have been reports of Ice increasingly aggressive enforcement in communities, including helicopters hovering over apartment raids.
