U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth is demanding Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins abandon his plan to use 12 parking spots at Edward Hines, JR. VA Hospital as a “staging area” for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Duckworth’s letter to Collins asks for “swift, decisive action to remove ICE from VA property and facilities.” The use of the parking lot prompted a protest at the west suburban hospital on Monday.
“It is preposterous that VA would believe allowing ICE to operate on the Hines campus will not adversely impact delivery of care for Hines’ patients,” Duckworth wrote. The senator said she is a Hines patient — and has experienced the limitations of the parking lot, which has long lacked the capacity to handle the daily volume of patients, family members and caregivers.
“The lack of parking has forced Veterans to miss appointments and made visiting Hines a highly stressful and unpleasant event for Veterans—an adverse customer service outcome that I have experienced myself when frantically searching for a parking spot that takes far too long to emerge on the Hines campus,” she wrote.
Duckworth writes that “it is not too late for you [Collins] to abandon your pathetic capitulation to ICE.”
The senator, who serves on the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, also warned that any “obstruction” to services at Hines could later be used by the Trump administration to justify privatizing the VA.
“From depriving Veterans of being accompanied by family members and caregivers who reasonably fear going anywhere near ICE—given the images of an out-of-control paramilitary force that refuses to identify itself with uniforms and covers its face as it snatches Americans off the streets into unmarked vans on the basis of the perceived nationality, race and the spoken language—to the Trump administration’s dishonorable distinction of deporting Veterans at an unprecedented rate; allowing ICE to stage its civil immigration enforcement operations on Hines property is a betrayal of your duty to put the best interests of veteran patients first,” Duckworth wrote.
The senator has also been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s threat to send the National Guard to Chicago. Duckworth, Durbin and U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider also tried meeting with Department of Homeland Security officials at the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago on Sept. 5, but DHS “refused” their offer and locked the doors to the office that the senators and congressman wanted to view.
The Department of Defense has secured use of an office building at the north suburban base through Oct. 5.
Durbin and Duckworth have also requested detailed information from the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department about Trump’s threat to deploy the military in Chicago.
The Department of Veterans Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.