Broadview mayor shrinks protest zones at ICE facility
Chicago Sun-Times (archive.ph)
By Violet Miller
2025-10-13 22:37:50GMT
Protesters yell at at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol vehicle from the 25th Avenue “free speech zone” near the Broadview ICE facility Saturday, shortly before the city’s 6 p.m. protest curfew. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson has signed a new executive order shrinking the designated “free speech zones” for demonstrations outside the west suburb’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, citing “chaos” at Saturday night’s protest.
It’s the latest executive order Thompson has signed to contain ongoing protests outside the facility, despite criticism from protesters and activists. Last week, she signed an order designating a curfew for demonstrations from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
Cook County and state law enforcement agencies set up “designated protest areas” at the facility earlier this month.
The designated protest zone at 2000 S. 25th Ave. is being closed, leaving the areas on Beach Street — about 4,000 square feet based on satellite imagery — as the only places for protesters to gather near the facility, according to a statement from Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson.
In a Monday morning statement, Thompson said the decision was made in consultation with Illinois State Police and the Cook County sheriff. She said protesters were “creating chaos at the expense of the people who call Broadview home,” and later rejected the idea her order infringed on First Amendment rights.
“We have a right to protect the residents that live here. So we have to put protocols in place to make sure that everybody is safe. This is a public safety issue. It’s not to take anybody’s rights away,” Thompson said at a morning news conference. “We don’t need the National Guard. We don’t. But we have a right to protect the integrity of this village.”
State police confirmed all decisions on protest zones are a joint decision from unified command, which includes the village of Broadview and oversees safety outside the facility. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.
A Sun-Times reporter covering the protest Saturday witnessed few disturbances before state police officers pushed the crowd of protesters onto and eventually down 25th Avenue, lunging at protesters who fell while backpedaling. Before then, six protesters were quickly arrested at various points in the day after stepping over the barricade of the “free speech zone,” sometimes attempting to block federal vehicles.
Later, after a handful of demonstrators heckled a federal vehicle in the street, state police pushed all protesters out of the designated protest areas and onto 25th Avenue. This was about 30 minutes before the town’s protest curfew.
Illinois State Police troopers push protesters refusing to disperse on 25th Avenue near the ICE facility shortly before the city of Broadview’s 6 p.m. protest curfew, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Rob Held, a member of the board of governors of the Chicago Council of Lawyers who was detained by Border Patrol while protesting outside the facility last month, told the Sun-Times Monday that demonstrators were “taunted and egged on by advancing police forces” Saturday night.
“What I saw was a poorly led, poorly trained police force acting aggressively and inappropriately to create an occasionally violent situation with protesters,” Held said. “It’s their conduct and understanding that a large crowd is not going to disperse in 30 seconds. … A more practical, gracious approach would go a long way in diffusing the tension at 6 p.m.”
Thompson said making the free speech zone smaller “will provide for both the serenity of residents and safety of protesters” by keeping protesters off 25th Avenue and away from the residential area across the street.
“Broadview residents lack the protesters’ privilege to return to calm, quiet neighborhoods for undisturbed rest,” she said. "[And] it has been only God’s grace alone that a protester has not been struck and killed by a motorist on 25th Avenue, given how frequently protesters dash onto this busy, four-lane street.”
Rob Held (right) asks a Cook County Sheriff’s police officer Sunday if they’ll be enforcing the Broadview protest curfew on 25th Avenue and Harvard Street outside the Broadview ICE processing facility. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Held agreed with the mayor’s decision, but added that the current zones are too small and that demonstrators need guarantees they won’t be hit with chemical or rubber munitions while in the designated areas.
A spokesperson for Broadview said the existing zones will not be expanded, and that she was grateful to all law enforcement responding to “help control unwieldy protests.”
A resident of the neighborhood bordering 25th Avenue said the protest noise has been down since the curfew went into place — though helicopters and police sirens have continued — and thinks that will continue with the latest move eliminating one of the free speech zones.
“It all just bleeds into the neighborhood,” the resident said. “I want these people to have their voices heard, and we may not be standing there with them, but we get what the cause is. … We just want people to be safe, and our neighborhood to be peaceful.”
---
Illinois lawmakers look at limiting federal immigration agents as Broadview shrinks designated protest area
Chicago Tribune (archive.ph)
By Dan Petrella
2025-10-13 23:30:02GMT
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, center, with community leaders and members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and calls for federal officials to bring down the fence along Beach Street near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
With the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts continuing to rile the Chicago area, officials in west suburban Broadview took steps on Monday to insulate residents from flare-ups between protesters and police as state lawmakers returning to Springfield this week look to strengthen legal safeguards for people swept up in “Operation Midway Blitz.”
With the Democratic-controlled legislature reconvening Tuesday for its scheduled six-day fall session, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said lawmakers will explore whether the state can restrict U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other immigration agency personnel from taking people into custody at sensitive facilities such as hospitals and courthouses, among other measures.
“If we can find a way to keep ICE from going into hospitals while people are recovering from injuries and surgeries, we want to keep them out of hospitals,” Welch said Monday. “If we can keep them out of courts and the areas around the courts, if we can do that properly, I would love to do that. ICE is disrupting and causing fear. They’re intimidating and antagonizing everywhere.”
Welch, a lead sponsor of the 2017 state law signed by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that restricts Illinois law enforcement from coordinating with federal immigration authorities, said he wants to ensure the state can enforce any measure lawmakers approve.
California, for instance, may face legal challenges for a recently passed state law prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks to conceal their faces, a practice they frequently engage in while on duty. Supporters say it is done so the agents are not identified and doxxed, but opponents say it allows them to act with impunity and without fear of being held accountable. Either way, legal experts and lawmakers have raised concerns about whether states can regulate federal officers.
“The things that we’re looking at, we want to make sure that they have teeth, that they’re substantive and that they are enforceable,” Welch said about any potential Illinois General Assembly initiatives, noting Illinois’ existing laws restricting cooperation with immigration authorities have been upheld in federal court. “We don’t want to do anything that’s symbolic. We want to do something substantive.”
The comments by Welch, a Hillside Democrat whose district includes the ICE processing facility that for weeks has been a flashpoint for protests, came as he joined Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson, other elected officials, activists and clergy members in a show of opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
During the current enforcement campaign, a Chicago alderman was briefly detained after she repeatedly asked federal agents if they had a judicial warrant for a man they sought inside a Humboldt Park hospital, while public defenders and legal advocates have asked Cook County’s chief judge to prohibit warrentless immigration arrests at or around courthouses after numerous sightings, including at the county’s Domestic Violence Courthouse.
State Rep. Norma Hernandez, a Melrose Park Democrat who heads the Illinois House Latino Caucus, said lawmakers also are “working tirelessly” to find ways to bar federal immigration agents from detaining people at places such as day care centers and schools “because our families belong in our communities, not in cages.”
“I also want to keep encouraging my colleagues and other elected officials to step in and join our calls to demand a stop to the cruelty, the dismantling of our Constitution and a call for full accountability,” Hernandez said. “Because today they’re coming for us, and tomorrow they’ll be coming for you. No family, regardless of their background, should be living in fear.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Beach Street sits behind a fence on Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
The group led by Welch gathered in front of a fence that a federal court has ordered the Trump administration to remove by the end of Tuesday, as it was erected without village permits and blocked the industrial side street leading to the ICE facility in Broadview. The elected leaders and others voiced solidarity with Thompson, who issued an executive order earlier Monday to shut down a previously authorized protest zone on nearby 25th Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the town of roughly 8,000 residents.
Welch praised Thompson for “standing strong because her community is strong” amid the ongoing immigration enforcement effort she opposes and the daily protests it has brought to her town.
On Saturday night, one of those protests “descended into chaos,” Thompson said, prompting the mayor to move forward with the executive order restricting protests to the area right outside the low-slung brick ICE facility on Beach Street.
A total of 15 people were arrested, including one charged with aggravated battery to a police officer, in connection with a confrontation between protesters and state troopers on the road.
Illinois Department of Transportation workers help guide a concrete barricade along the residential side of South 25th Street near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Thompson on Monday issued the executive order “in consultation with” state police and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office, closing the protest zone on the 2000 block of South 25th Avenue.
In a statement Monday, state police spokeswoman Melaney Arnold emphasized the small number of arrests state and local law enforcement have made compared with the large number of people who’ve shown up to protest.
“Over the past three weeks of protests, more than 2,500 people have gathered outside the ICE facility, with just 33 total arrests by all agencies in the Unified Command,” Arnold said in an emailed statement, referencing the joint effort by state police, the Cook County sheriff’s office and local police. “The majority of those arrests are of people who would not stay out of the street; obstructing traffic and putting themselves at risk of being hit by oncoming traffic. Other charges include mob action, aggravated battery to police, and criminal damage to state property.”
Speaking at the news conference with Welch and other area officials, Thompson said that while she is “outraged by the inhumane treatment of our immigrant brothers and sisters and by the unprovoked chemical attacks unleashed by (federal) agents against American citizens, journalists and ministers,” she also has a responsibility “to protect public safety and to defend” her town’s residents.
The intersection of Harvard Street and South 25th Avenue, a former protest zone, was shut down by Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson on Oct. 13, 2025, near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Beach Street. All protest activity has been designated to the areas along Beach. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
“Let me be clear: Broadview did not choose to have the ICE facility in our community, but it’s here, and so are our residents,” Thompson said. “There have been far too many protesters raising their fists instead of their voices, creating chaos at the expense of those who live here. Our residents do not have the privilege to retreat to quiet neighborhoods once the cameras are gone. They live here, they work here, and they deserve peace.”
Still, Thompson said the move to further restrict protests, which follows an order last week limiting demonstrations to the hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., does not mean officials are unable to maintain order through ordinary law enforcement means.
In federal court last week, lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the National Guard was needed to protect the ICE facility and other federal assets and personnel, an argument a judge rejected in issuing a temporary order blocking the deployment of Guard troops in the Chicago area.
“We don’t need the National Guard. We don’t,” Thompson said. “But we have a right to protect the integrity of this village.”
---
This dumb ass nigger politician compares the fence outside the Broadview ICE facility to the Berlin Wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czGhlpC4feI (megalodon.jp)(PreserveTube)
From Saturday during daylight hours, I didn't see any footage from that night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkmAbmxTNoQ (megalodon.jp)(PreserveTube)
Chicago Sun-Times (archive.ph)
By Violet Miller
2025-10-13 22:37:50GMT
Protesters yell at at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol vehicle from the 25th Avenue “free speech zone” near the Broadview ICE facility Saturday, shortly before the city’s 6 p.m. protest curfew. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson has signed a new executive order shrinking the designated “free speech zones” for demonstrations outside the west suburb’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, citing “chaos” at Saturday night’s protest.
It’s the latest executive order Thompson has signed to contain ongoing protests outside the facility, despite criticism from protesters and activists. Last week, she signed an order designating a curfew for demonstrations from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
Cook County and state law enforcement agencies set up “designated protest areas” at the facility earlier this month.
The designated protest zone at 2000 S. 25th Ave. is being closed, leaving the areas on Beach Street — about 4,000 square feet based on satellite imagery — as the only places for protesters to gather near the facility, according to a statement from Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson.
In a Monday morning statement, Thompson said the decision was made in consultation with Illinois State Police and the Cook County sheriff. She said protesters were “creating chaos at the expense of the people who call Broadview home,” and later rejected the idea her order infringed on First Amendment rights.
“We have a right to protect the residents that live here. So we have to put protocols in place to make sure that everybody is safe. This is a public safety issue. It’s not to take anybody’s rights away,” Thompson said at a morning news conference. “We don’t need the National Guard. We don’t. But we have a right to protect the integrity of this village.”
State police confirmed all decisions on protest zones are a joint decision from unified command, which includes the village of Broadview and oversees safety outside the facility. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.
A Sun-Times reporter covering the protest Saturday witnessed few disturbances before state police officers pushed the crowd of protesters onto and eventually down 25th Avenue, lunging at protesters who fell while backpedaling. Before then, six protesters were quickly arrested at various points in the day after stepping over the barricade of the “free speech zone,” sometimes attempting to block federal vehicles.
Later, after a handful of demonstrators heckled a federal vehicle in the street, state police pushed all protesters out of the designated protest areas and onto 25th Avenue. This was about 30 minutes before the town’s protest curfew.
Illinois State Police troopers push protesters refusing to disperse on 25th Avenue near the ICE facility shortly before the city of Broadview’s 6 p.m. protest curfew, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025. Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Rob Held, a member of the board of governors of the Chicago Council of Lawyers who was detained by Border Patrol while protesting outside the facility last month, told the Sun-Times Monday that demonstrators were “taunted and egged on by advancing police forces” Saturday night.
“What I saw was a poorly led, poorly trained police force acting aggressively and inappropriately to create an occasionally violent situation with protesters,” Held said. “It’s their conduct and understanding that a large crowd is not going to disperse in 30 seconds. … A more practical, gracious approach would go a long way in diffusing the tension at 6 p.m.”
Thompson said making the free speech zone smaller “will provide for both the serenity of residents and safety of protesters” by keeping protesters off 25th Avenue and away from the residential area across the street.
“Broadview residents lack the protesters’ privilege to return to calm, quiet neighborhoods for undisturbed rest,” she said. "[And] it has been only God’s grace alone that a protester has not been struck and killed by a motorist on 25th Avenue, given how frequently protesters dash onto this busy, four-lane street.”
Rob Held (right) asks a Cook County Sheriff’s police officer Sunday if they’ll be enforcing the Broadview protest curfew on 25th Avenue and Harvard Street outside the Broadview ICE processing facility. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Held agreed with the mayor’s decision, but added that the current zones are too small and that demonstrators need guarantees they won’t be hit with chemical or rubber munitions while in the designated areas.
A spokesperson for Broadview said the existing zones will not be expanded, and that she was grateful to all law enforcement responding to “help control unwieldy protests.”
A resident of the neighborhood bordering 25th Avenue said the protest noise has been down since the curfew went into place — though helicopters and police sirens have continued — and thinks that will continue with the latest move eliminating one of the free speech zones.
“It all just bleeds into the neighborhood,” the resident said. “I want these people to have their voices heard, and we may not be standing there with them, but we get what the cause is. … We just want people to be safe, and our neighborhood to be peaceful.”
---
Illinois lawmakers look at limiting federal immigration agents as Broadview shrinks designated protest area
Chicago Tribune (archive.ph)
By Dan Petrella
2025-10-13 23:30:02GMT
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, center, with community leaders and members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and calls for federal officials to bring down the fence along Beach Street near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
With the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts continuing to rile the Chicago area, officials in west suburban Broadview took steps on Monday to insulate residents from flare-ups between protesters and police as state lawmakers returning to Springfield this week look to strengthen legal safeguards for people swept up in “Operation Midway Blitz.”
With the Democratic-controlled legislature reconvening Tuesday for its scheduled six-day fall session, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said lawmakers will explore whether the state can restrict U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other immigration agency personnel from taking people into custody at sensitive facilities such as hospitals and courthouses, among other measures.
“If we can find a way to keep ICE from going into hospitals while people are recovering from injuries and surgeries, we want to keep them out of hospitals,” Welch said Monday. “If we can keep them out of courts and the areas around the courts, if we can do that properly, I would love to do that. ICE is disrupting and causing fear. They’re intimidating and antagonizing everywhere.”
Welch, a lead sponsor of the 2017 state law signed by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that restricts Illinois law enforcement from coordinating with federal immigration authorities, said he wants to ensure the state can enforce any measure lawmakers approve.
California, for instance, may face legal challenges for a recently passed state law prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks to conceal their faces, a practice they frequently engage in while on duty. Supporters say it is done so the agents are not identified and doxxed, but opponents say it allows them to act with impunity and without fear of being held accountable. Either way, legal experts and lawmakers have raised concerns about whether states can regulate federal officers.
“The things that we’re looking at, we want to make sure that they have teeth, that they’re substantive and that they are enforceable,” Welch said about any potential Illinois General Assembly initiatives, noting Illinois’ existing laws restricting cooperation with immigration authorities have been upheld in federal court. “We don’t want to do anything that’s symbolic. We want to do something substantive.”
The comments by Welch, a Hillside Democrat whose district includes the ICE processing facility that for weeks has been a flashpoint for protests, came as he joined Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson, other elected officials, activists and clergy members in a show of opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
During the current enforcement campaign, a Chicago alderman was briefly detained after she repeatedly asked federal agents if they had a judicial warrant for a man they sought inside a Humboldt Park hospital, while public defenders and legal advocates have asked Cook County’s chief judge to prohibit warrentless immigration arrests at or around courthouses after numerous sightings, including at the county’s Domestic Violence Courthouse.
State Rep. Norma Hernandez, a Melrose Park Democrat who heads the Illinois House Latino Caucus, said lawmakers also are “working tirelessly” to find ways to bar federal immigration agents from detaining people at places such as day care centers and schools “because our families belong in our communities, not in cages.”
“I also want to keep encouraging my colleagues and other elected officials to step in and join our calls to demand a stop to the cruelty, the dismantling of our Constitution and a call for full accountability,” Hernandez said. “Because today they’re coming for us, and tomorrow they’ll be coming for you. No family, regardless of their background, should be living in fear.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Beach Street sits behind a fence on Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
The group led by Welch gathered in front of a fence that a federal court has ordered the Trump administration to remove by the end of Tuesday, as it was erected without village permits and blocked the industrial side street leading to the ICE facility in Broadview. The elected leaders and others voiced solidarity with Thompson, who issued an executive order earlier Monday to shut down a previously authorized protest zone on nearby 25th Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the town of roughly 8,000 residents.
Welch praised Thompson for “standing strong because her community is strong” amid the ongoing immigration enforcement effort she opposes and the daily protests it has brought to her town.
On Saturday night, one of those protests “descended into chaos,” Thompson said, prompting the mayor to move forward with the executive order restricting protests to the area right outside the low-slung brick ICE facility on Beach Street.
A total of 15 people were arrested, including one charged with aggravated battery to a police officer, in connection with a confrontation between protesters and state troopers on the road.
Illinois Department of Transportation workers help guide a concrete barricade along the residential side of South 25th Street near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Thompson on Monday issued the executive order “in consultation with” state police and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office, closing the protest zone on the 2000 block of South 25th Avenue.
In a statement Monday, state police spokeswoman Melaney Arnold emphasized the small number of arrests state and local law enforcement have made compared with the large number of people who’ve shown up to protest.
“Over the past three weeks of protests, more than 2,500 people have gathered outside the ICE facility, with just 33 total arrests by all agencies in the Unified Command,” Arnold said in an emailed statement, referencing the joint effort by state police, the Cook County sheriff’s office and local police. “The majority of those arrests are of people who would not stay out of the street; obstructing traffic and putting themselves at risk of being hit by oncoming traffic. Other charges include mob action, aggravated battery to police, and criminal damage to state property.”
Speaking at the news conference with Welch and other area officials, Thompson said that while she is “outraged by the inhumane treatment of our immigrant brothers and sisters and by the unprovoked chemical attacks unleashed by (federal) agents against American citizens, journalists and ministers,” she also has a responsibility “to protect public safety and to defend” her town’s residents.
The intersection of Harvard Street and South 25th Avenue, a former protest zone, was shut down by Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson on Oct. 13, 2025, near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Beach Street. All protest activity has been designated to the areas along Beach. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
“Let me be clear: Broadview did not choose to have the ICE facility in our community, but it’s here, and so are our residents,” Thompson said. “There have been far too many protesters raising their fists instead of their voices, creating chaos at the expense of those who live here. Our residents do not have the privilege to retreat to quiet neighborhoods once the cameras are gone. They live here, they work here, and they deserve peace.”
Still, Thompson said the move to further restrict protests, which follows an order last week limiting demonstrations to the hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., does not mean officials are unable to maintain order through ordinary law enforcement means.
In federal court last week, lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the National Guard was needed to protect the ICE facility and other federal assets and personnel, an argument a judge rejected in issuing a temporary order blocking the deployment of Guard troops in the Chicago area.
“We don’t need the National Guard. We don’t,” Thompson said. “But we have a right to protect the integrity of this village.”
---
This dumb ass nigger politician compares the fence outside the Broadview ICE facility to the Berlin Wall.
From Saturday during daylight hours, I didn't see any footage from that night:
