Among masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and fired-up protesters, Abraham Aguirre stood outside the ICE building in Broadview on Sunday with a red suitcase and dark duffel bag.
He believed his cousin was inside.
Aguirre knocked on the boarded-up windows and handed off the provisions: clothes, personal items, toiletries.
“Not scared, not nervous, but I feel a deep sense of injustice,” Aguirre said in Spanish through a translator.
Aguirre came to the ICE facility as protests against the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” and ramped-up immigration arrests stretch into their second week. Speculation brewed among protesters as HuffPost reported that ICE would be vacating the Broadview facility due to protests and some questioned whether the detainees believed to be on the buses were being transported elsewhere. HuffPost’s story was updated Sunday night to say DHS decided to keep the facility open and operational despite an initial plan to temporarily close it.
Aguirre’s cousin was detained with two of his coworkers, and Aguirre believed they were all set to be deported — two to Mexico and one to Venezuela.
Not long after Aguirre arrived, two buses left the gated parking lot of the ICE facility. Aguirre and other protesters believed they were carrying detainees.
As the buses drove by, the insults, shouts and chants that the small crowd had hurled for much of the day subsided. Aguirre gave a thumbs up and peace signs toward the tinted bus windows, hoping his cousin and friends could see him saying goodbye from outside.
Aguirre’s cousin is married and has two children ages 7 and 2, he said. He had spent more than $15,000 to move to the U.S., Aguirre said.
After waving toward the bus, Aguirre shook hands with some of the protesters outside the facility before leaving.
“Lo siento mucho,” one woman called after him — Spanish for “I’m so sorry.”
The woman, who declined to give her name but said she came to observe ICE operations and help people looking for their family members who had been detained, shed quiet tears after she watched Aguirre waving at the bus.
“He said he had a family,” she said. “There needs to be immigration reform. But is this really it?”
The woman, whose parents immigrated from Mexico before she was born, said she witnessed an ICE arrest last week in Belmont Cragin.
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson told the Sun-Times on Sunday that she hadn’t been informed of any relocation plans for the ICE facility.
In a statement to the Sun-Times on Sunday afternoon, Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the Broadview facility wouldn’t be closing, but she didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether operations there would be changing in response to the protests.
McLaughlin also confirmed 16 protesters in total had been arrested at the Broadview facility this month. A state official told the Sun-Times that Broadview police and Cook County sheriff’s haven’t asked the Illinois State Police for help despite DHS claims to the contrary. Matt Hill, a spokesperson for Gov. JB Pritzker denied the state has received multiple calls for assistance and said the Trump administration shouldn’t be trusted “given their record of lies, lack of transparency, and failure to coordinate with the state and local law enforcement.”
One protester was arrested outside the facility Sunday.
Immigration enforcement officials have arrested almost 550 people in the Chicago operation that launched about two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
Jessica Bustos, a 36-year-old South Side resident who works with undocumented families, arrived early with her parents and daughter in tow. They came together because “Sundays are slower,” referring to lower tensions at the center.
They played Mexican music, leading nearly a dozen protesters at the scene about 11 a.m. to break into dance on the sidewalk crossing the facility’s driveway. Bustos’ parents gained citizenship over the course of 13 years, at a cost of nearly $25,000. They spent 13 of their 37 years of marriage apart because of the slow-moving immigration process.
“I’m trying to teach my daughter we need to protect our communities and to be proud of who we are,” Bustos told the Sun-Times. “I feel their pain. … It’s really sad we have to protect ourselves from this.”
But the celebration was halted abruptly as ICE agents streamed out of the gate to fire pepper balls at protesters attempting to block a car from leaving. An agent pushed demonstrator Levi Rolls to the ground after they shot him with non-lethal rounds.
Minutes later, Rolls was arrested while attempting to again block a vehicle.
Rolls said he was given a fine of $580 and a citation for disturbance and disorderly conduct on federal property.
Several vehicles, including a bus and a U-Haul van, were seen coming and going from the facility throughout the day Sunday. Agents, many in masks, hats and sunglasses, also came and went, to shouts of “traitors!” from the crowd. At least one agent was seen on the roof of the building firing pepper balls at protesters periodically.
No one was arrested by Broadview police.
A protester who was detained Saturday night was released after being held for five hours and came back to the detention center on Sunday afternoon to continue demonstrating. They were accused of “assault on officers” and were interrogated about two vehicles that had slashed tires days ago.
“The way they’re treating people, it’s showing people that when you’re in a uniform, you can do whatever you want,” they told the Sun-Times. “The more we let people run over us, the more it’s going to get worse,” they said.
Contributing: Tina Sfondeles, Associated Press