Two decades ago, long before the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement facility in west suburban Broadview became the site of daily protests, it was a place of prayer — at least on Friday mornings.
It was 2006. The country had just conducted the largest workplace raid in its history. A group of Catholics would gather, whatever the weather, to pray for the immigrants inside, their families, and the ICE officers. What started as two nuns and a local immigration attorney holding vigil right outside of the building has become a weekly practice that continues to this day — albeit now a block and a half away from the facility, due to protest zones and curfew restrictions.
“We had a very large group praying with us last Friday, and we plan to be there again this Friday, and every Friday going forward,” said Royal Berg, the immigration lawyer who started the vigil in 2006 with Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy.
For Berg, a practicing Catholic, those earlier days of prayer are in sharp contrast to the sights and sounds around the ICE facility today. In the last couple of months, the building has become a de facto detention center where religious leaders say immigrants lack access to pastoral care, and where clergy have been attacked while praying and speaking out against the Trump administration’s campaign against immigration. Advocates and religious leaders say such practices violate religious liberties and contradict the administration’s claim to the U.S. as a Christian nation.
“The things I see happening at Broadview are so against what I believe Christianity is,” said Persch, who at 91 now mostly joins the prayer vigils over Zoom. “To be shooting [protesters] with chemicals, pushing them down, even people with collars on; and inside [Broadview], the denials of pastoral care, of legal help, of family contact — everything that’s happening is just the opposite of everything my faith challenges me to do.”
In addition to examples of local pastors being hit with pepper balls and tear gas by federal agents, Pesrch and Berg also cited an attempt on Oct. 11 by a group of clergy to offer Holy Communion to immigrants inside the facility. ICE denied the request.
In a statement emailed to WBEZ, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said ICE staff had informed the clergy that it was “not able to accommodate visitors on such short notice for their safety as well as that of detainees and staff, and due to the ensuing riots.”
McLaughlin added 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.”
Access to clergy inside the ICE facility
Broadview is a “service processing center” that is intended to hold people picked up by immigration authorities before they are released, deported or transferred to a detention facility. But officials have previously told Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ that the facility is operated “in strict accordance with its National Detention Standards (NDS) to ensure the safety, security, and humane treatment of individuals in custody.”
The NDS require detention centers to provide detainees with the opportunity to practice their faith, the ability to observe important religious holy days, a chaplain, adequate space for religious activities and resources for community groups and volunteers that provide religious services not provided by the chaplain or facility.
According to several sources familiar with the Broadview facility, there is no chaplain in the building. Between 2010 and 2020 at the start of the pandemic, Sisters Persch and Murphy and other volunteers had an arrangement with ICE to go inside the facility each week to talk and pray with immigrants and their families. Even as recently as February, Persch said she was able to work with ICE officers to advocate for the removal of an ankle monitor for an immigrant.
Now, Persch says, “our government has set a different tone [with] Operation Midway Blitz,” referring to Trump’s ramped up deportation campaign that began this September.
Recently, she tried to help clergy gain access into the Broadview facility to administer Communion, but to no avail.
One immigrant who recently spent three days inside Broadview told WBEZ there were no Bibles for people who needed them.
Ed Yohnka, with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an emailed statement that the ACLU is investigating reports of religious and other rights being violated inside the Broadview facility.
“Like other basic rights, the Trump Administration has treated religious liberty as optional —something to be discarded when it interferes with their political agenda,” the statement said. “The Constitution does not stop at the gates of Broadview. The right to practice one’s faith without government interference applies to everyone, including those in immigration custody.”
Yohnka also said religious rights are being violated outside the walls of the facility, on the block where protesters have clashed with federal agents and, more recently, state police.
Confrontations with clergy
Rev. David Black, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, is familiar with those confrontations. The photo of Black being teargassed by ICE agents, as well as video of him being shot in the head with a pepper ball, have gone viral in recent weeks.
Black said that while his First Amendment rights were violated, they pale in comparison to what’s happening to immigrants inside.
“If this is how they are treating peaceful protesters, clergy, teachers, people with open hands, who are praying, singing songs,” Black said, “then what they might be doing to our neighbors who are in captivity behind closed doors … is unimaginable and horrifying.”
In a statement DHS said “agitators” were blocking an ICE vehicle from leaving the facility and “impeding operations,” and were warned that force would be used if they did not move. Black said he was not obstructing any vehicles and that there was no warning before he was hit in the head with a pepper ball.
Black was one of several parties, including journalists and protesters, that filed suit against DHS for its use of pepper balls and tear gas. A federal judge ruled on Oct. 9 that federal agents cannot deploy chemical irritants at people practicing their First Amendment rights.
United Church of Rogers Park Pastor Hannah Kardon, too, was hit with multiple pepper balls while wearing her clerical collar and praying during her earlier visits to Broadview.
Kardon, a United Methodist minister, said that despite having marched in other protests, as a member of the clergy, “this is the first time I’ve received this kind of violent treatment.”
Last Friday, she was arrested by Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriff’s Police while protesting outside the facility and charged with obstruction of justice, disobeying an officer and resisting arrest.
Kardon and more than 200 other religious leaders from numerous denominations recently signed an open letter asking the Trump administration to change course on immigration enforcement and for community members to get involved in protecting immigrants.
For Alex Haskins, associate professor of politics and international relations at Wheaton College, the treatment of clergy and the denial of religious rights of immigrants are antithetical to the Constitution and to the Christian faith — two issues the Trump administration touts regularly.
Haskins said the Trump administration and its allies use a Bible passage in the book of Romans — “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established” — to justify the use of force and to quell protests. He says their use of this verse misses broader historical and theological context.
He added that the Christian tradition has long been to “welcome the stranger,” but starting in the 1970s, the rise of the Religious Right led to “a law-and-order Christianity.”
Instead, Haskins would like Christian political leaders to consider a theological doctrine called “Imago Dei.” Haskins explains it as the idea that “all human beings have been created in the image of God, and we have inherent dignity as a result.” The way federal agents are treating immigrants and protesters is “not in the character of Christ. That’s not what we’re called to,” Haskins said.
Moreover, he added, what’s happening inside and outside of the ICE facility does not reflect the Trump’s administration’s claim to value religious freedom.
“If you care about religious liberty and the freedom to practice religion, then you need to be thinking about the ways that those who are being held [inside Broadview] and also clergy who have approached them are not able to do that,” Haskins said.
Contributing: Adriana Cardona-Maguigad, Lauren FitzPatrick