Following more than three hours of testimony about people crammed 100 at a time into a holding cell without a hot meal, with nowhere to sleep but a dirty floor near an open toilet, a federal judge concluded the feds’ Broadview immigration facility is no longer just a temporary holding center.
“It has really become a prison,” U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said.
The judge then agreed Tuesday that a case had been made for a temporary restraining order governing conditions inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. It’s become the focal point of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign here.
In fact, the facility has become so central to “Operation Midway Blitz” that a Justice Department lawyer warned such an order could shut the whole thing down.
The commentary came during a hearing at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, prompted by a proposed class-action lawsuit brought last week by the MacArthur Justice Center and Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU. It alleges that “Broadview is a black hole, and federal officials are acting with impunity inside its walls.”
Gettleman put off a final ruling until Wednesday afternoon. He said he doesn’t plan to “fashion an order that is impossible to comply with.” But he also said he’d been presented with a “disturbing record” Tuesday that cleared the bar for court intervention.
“I think everybody can admit that we don’t want to treat people the way that I heard people are being treated today,” the judge said.
Five former detainees described unsanitary conditions inside the Broadview facility. One broke down on the stand, telling the judge “it was too much, it was too much.” One said he had to step over bodies at night while people slept on the floor. Another said he’d have to wake people up to go to the bathroom at night, because they were sleeping beside the toilet.
Justice Department lawyer Jana Brady challenged their memories and understanding of events inside the facility. She argued in a recent court filing that people there are “adequately provided with food, clothing, shelter, and medical care before they are transferred to another detention facility.”
But Tuesday’s testimony was otherwise met with a tepid response. Rather than take it on directly, Brady argued that a temporary restraining order could actually cripple the Trump administration’s immigration campaign, given how central the Broadview facility is to that mission.
“Granting this [temporary restraining order], as it’s proposed currently, would effectively halt the government’s ability to enforce immigration laws in Illinois,” she said.
Gettleman assured lawyers near the end of the day that he doesn’t intend to do anything that will “interfere with the executive’s decision to increase the enforcement of the immigration laws.”
But the judge also warned early in the day that, “if the conditions are unconstitutional, so be it.”
Chicago’s federal courthouse has been the site of several pivotal hearings in recent weeks, as lawyers push back against the Trump administration deportation campaign. Judges there have sided against the White House when it comes to National Guard deployment and the treatment of protesters and journalists.
Now the focus is on the detention facility that’s been the site of near-daily protests ever since the start of “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Government lawyers have recently said the Broadview facility is “not equipped to be an overnight facility.” But the Sun-Times and WBEZ have since documented how it has been holding people for multiple days at a time.
And the lawsuit before Gettleman alleges the feds “are now warehousing people at Broadview for days on end.”
Lawyers claim “the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable. Most nights are freezing cold, yet only some receive a thin foil blanket, sweater, or sweatpants to try to retain warmth.”
“The physical conditions are filthy,” the lawyers allege in the lawsuit, “with poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids, and insects in the sinks and the floor.”
They called it a “breeding ground for illness to spread,” and added that “privacy is non-existent.”
Pablo Moreno Gonzalez told the judge he was detained there last week from Wednesday until Friday. He described being held in a cell with as many as 150 men, where people were gathered inches away from the toilet and “you can’t go because everybody’s seeing you.”
Felipe Agustin Zamacona, arrested last Thursday in Wheeling, said he had to wake someone up because they were sleeping beside the toilet and he had to use it. And Claudia Carolina Pereira Guevara testified through a remote link from Honduras that she and other female detainees had to use garbage bags to unclog a toilet at one point.
“One day we asked for a broom so that we, ourselves, could clean,” she said. “And they refused.”
Gonzalez and Zamacona are still in federal custody. Guevara has been deported.
Lawyer Shelby Vcelka testified about trying to get a breast pump and nipple cream to a nursing mother of a “4-month-old U.S. citizen child” while the mother was being held at the Broadview facility. Vcelka said she was eventually allowed to walk up to its front door to pass them on.
But she never actually heard from the woman while she was detained in Broadview. The client was eventually deported. And Vcelka said she later learned that the woman never received the items Vcelka delivered.
Ruben Torres Maldonado, whose arrest recently made headlines because his 16-year-old daughter is battling cancer, also took the stand in Gettleman’s courtroom after an immigration judge ordered his release last week.
Maldonado said he found a seat while being held for multiple days at the Broadview facility where he could sleep but others had to rest on the floor.
“It was full at night,” Maldonado said.
The facility, he said, “smelled like excrement.”
“In the morning they would give us this bottle of water and this piece of Subway sandwich with one lettuce and one slice of ham,” he said. “And for lunch it was the same thing. And for dinner it was the same thing.”
But, he said, there was one benefit provided to detainees if they agreed to sign off on their own deportation.
Maldonado told the judge, “they would leave earlier.”