For months, immigrants held at the federal Broadview ICE facility have been describing terrible conditions they’ve experienced: overcrowding, poor food, nowhere to sleep, isolation from the outside world — including no access to legal counsel.
On Thursday, immigrants rights lawyers and advocates filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s top immigration enforcement officials, on behalf of two men and everyone who’s been jailed in the immigration processing facility turned de facto detention center, calling the center a “black box in which to disappear people from the U.S. justice and immigration systems.”
The lawsuit accuses Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others of “warehousing people at Broadview for days on end. The consequences have been dire, and wholly predictable.
“Defendants know and intend that the conditions they have created in Broadview are resulting in the inhumane treatment” of an unknown number of immigrants held since the feds launched what it calls “Operation Midway Blitz” in September.
In a statement, U.S. Department of Homeland spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, “Any claims there are subprime conditions at the Broadview ICE facility are false.” DHS is the parent agency for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. McLaughlin made several claims about the conditions in Broadview to rebut the assertions in the lawsuit but did provide any evidence to support them.
Many of the conditions described in the lawsuit were previously reported by the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ: Sleeping on cold crowded floors, no showers or hygiene products, lack of access to medicine.
But the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the MacArthur Justice Center and the Chicago office of Eimer Stahl, whose lawyers filed the suit and have represented immigrants held at Broadview, added new details accusing the government of denying detainees access to legal counsel:
“Federal officers at Broadview… are coercing people to sign immigration paperwork that many detainees do not understand,” giving up their rights to see an immigration judge before being sent out of the country. People are also being sent to detention facilities far away — or out of the country altogether, the lawsuit says, “before their attorneys can locate them and intervene.” And immigrants are being held without bond, prevented from speaking with an attorney who could petition in immigration court for their release.
Plus, attorneys can’t physically find their clients because ICE’s online detainee locator isn’t accurate, according to the lawsuit. Families of immigrants known to be at Broadview have told WBEZ and the Sun-Times that when they search for their loved one, the locator responds that the person is generally in ICE custody and provides a number to call.
“Everyone, no matter their legal status, has the right to access counsel and to not be subject to horrific and inhumane conditions,” said Alexa Van Brunt, Illinois Director of the MacArthur Justice Center.
The lawsuit argues that the conditions at Broadview are not unique.
“Similar overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, lack of basic hygiene, insufficient food and water, inadequate sleeping conditions, substandard medical care, and extreme restrictions on attorney-client communications are pervasive” at immigration facilities throughout the country,” the lawsuit charges. The conditions have sparked multiple lawsuits accusing the federal government of violating the law and ICE’s own policies.
The Sun-Times and WBEZ have documented how the federal immigration processing center in west suburban Broadview, which is meant to hold people for a few hours at a time, is instead keeping people for days on end as a detention center.
DHS officials have previously told Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ that the facility is operated “in strict accordance with its National Detention Standards.” But as a processing center, Broadview has no beds or cafeteria, and yet, the most recently available records show that federal authorities have jailed immigrants there for more than three, four or even five days. That’s according to records through the end of July, weeks before Trump escalated his mass deportation “blitz” on Chicago, flooding the city and suburbs with federal immigration officers.
Local Congressional members and clergy of many denominations also have been denied entry repeatedly, despite laws permitting Congressional access to detention centers and rules guaranteeing detainees the right to practice their religious beliefs. Nuns and ministers have described that their ability to enter Broadview to deliver bibles and pray with immigrants jailed halted after Trump took office.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin has previously told WBEZ that requests to tour the processing center need to be made a week in advance “to ensure no intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority.” Despite that, no visits to the facility appear to have been allowed.
Contributing: Jon Seidel