Religious leaders denied request to deliver Communion to detainees at Broadview facility

A request by religious leaders hoping to deliver Holy Communion to detainees at the Broadview processing facility on Saturday has been denied.

Hundreds of people, including a delegation of religious leaders from Chicago and suburbs, marched down Lexington Street toward the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview Saturday in hopes of delivering Holy Communion to detainees.

Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders from the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership gathered at St. Eulalia Church in Maywood before proceeding to the detention facility, which has been at the center of ongoing demonstrations in recent weeks. Around 11 a.m., they marched down Lexington, praying and singing, before they arrived at the facility.

Illinois State Police Lt. Colonel Jason Bradley called the facility with the religious leaders’ request to give Communion. Bradley said ICE denied the request.

Bradley said no reason will be given for the denial.

More than 500 members of the parish and other member organizations of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership from the Chicago area were part of the delegation.

When the leaders announced to the group that ICE had declined the request, people started yelling “Shame! Shame!”

The group had communion among themselves on the parking lot and street before dispersing to either walk home or go on the yellow school buses the organizers had rented to take people home.

Father Larry Dowling, one of the priests holding the communion elements, said, “We’re just very disappointed because we simply wanted to bring the love of God and the presence of the Eucharist to these prisoners, which we had been allowed to do before all this stuff happened. So they’re basically rejecting us bringing the presence of Christ and the love of God.”

On Saturday, crews put up barricades in front of the fence that a judge ordered removed by Tuesday per state police orders, according to a crew person on site.

U.S. District Judge LaShonda A. Hunt issued a temporary restraining order Thursday ordering the removal of the fence outside the processing facility to be taken down immediately.

The fence, erected in September, was still up as of Saturday morning. Officials have until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday to take down the fence.

Dozens of protesters were gathered at Harvard Street and 25th Avenue Saturday.

A guitar-playing protester was detained Saturday morning after he went over the barricade as buses drove by carrying what appeared to be detainees.

Protester Joshua Crozier, 26, who had been singing and playing his guitar all morning, went over the barricade to show a message on his guitar as the buses went by and was tackled by officers.

The ICE facility is the site of ongoing and often tense demonstrations, with agents deploying chemical irritants and rubber pellets, since President Donald Trump’s administration aggressively ramped up a deportation campaign in the Chicago area last month under the name “Operation Midway Blitz.”

Since then, protesters have arrived at the facility in the early morning hours, sometimes as early as 5 a.m. and have clashed with federal authorities into the late night hours.