Two Broadview, Ill., police officers, one Illinois State Police officer, and a Cook County sheriff’s deputy were injured during a wild melee outside the ICE detention facility in the city. The federal detention center has been a flashpoint for protests since ICE undertook “Operation Midway Blitz” starting in early September.
The protest began peacefully as about 100 demonstrators showed up around 9:00 a.m. on Friday and lined up on the street opposite the detention center. Then, about 10:00 a.m., around 50 protesters showed up and crossed the police line. As the cops moved in, the “mostly peaceful” protesters attempted to incite the officers to violence.
They got their wish.
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson blamed “out-of-towners” for the violence, and said attacking the officers was “unacceptable and outrageous.”
Thompson issued a statement, saying, “I have repeatedly pleaded to protesters to raise their voices, not their fists. They have chosen their fists. These out-of-towners have chosen to brutalize police officers who have been protecting their free speech and protecting them against assaults by ICE agents. We will see them in court.”
Blaming “out-of-towners” for violence at protests is an old trick that doesn’t hold water. Jillian Westerfield, the associate minister at Lake Street Church in Evanston, claims she joined the protest on the spur of the moment and ended up being thrown to the ground during the melee. She didn’t mention that she crossed the barrier to join the other protesters wanting to get arrested.
“Even though many of us don’t live inside Broadview, we are still neighbors and I do think that we belong there,” Westerfield said.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) also issued a statement, explaining Law Enforcement 101 to those unsure of why the police acted the way they did.
CCSO said, “Unfortunately, as members of the Unified Command were allowing peaceful protest in Broadview this morning, approximately 50 protestors decided to exit the designated protest area and unlawfully enter the roadway. As they were unlawfully assembling in the roadway, four officers sustained injuries while trying to redirect them back behind the jersey barriers.”
The irony of this anti-ICE protest is that there were no ICE officers on scene.
A large crowd of protesters had gathered outside the facility, some waving placards reading “God Demands Freedom” and “Protest Is Patriotic,” while others held colorful signs shaped like butterflies.
A group then tried to move beyond concrete barriers and walk down the street toward the ICE facility, a move police considered a major violation, according to sources. Last week, a group known as the “Suburban Moms” staged a peaceful sit-in on the same street.
Those detained were taken to the Broadview ICE Processing Facility, officials said.
The incident comes after a federal judge ordered 13 detainees released and said hundreds more could qualify for home confinement, marking another setback for the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz.
There are 600 other detainees at the Broadview facility who have been ordered released on bond due to the “unsafe and unsanitary” conditions. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings described what he called a “pattern of unlawful arrests and confinement,” and said that the detainees must be released by November 21
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