The 76-page lawsuit names defendants including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, alongside other government officials and agencies.
A recently-filed class action lawsuit alleges that staff at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Broadview, Illinois, treat detainees like “animals,” describing it as a “black box”-type site where immigrants are regularly deprived of basic rights.
According to FOX32-Chicago, the Broadview detention center has served as ICE’s main center of activity during “Operation Midway Blitz,” an immigration-enforcement operation taking place in and around Chicago.
“It’s supposed to be a holding facility, where people are housed for about 12 hours and they go somewhere else, but that’s not how it’s being used and that’s the core of the problem,” said Samuel Cole, chief immigration litigation counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “It’s being used as a detention facility to keep people day after day after day.”
The 76-page lawsuit names defendants including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, alongside other government officials and agencies.
“There’s not enough food given to the people who are detained there, there’s not enough water given to the people who are detained there, there is very little medical care, no mental healthcare. There are no beds to sleep in, no pillows—people are using toilet paper as pillows,” Cole said.
The lawsuit, notes FOX32, alleges that detainees are even monitored while in the restroom, something that is “especially distressing for the women” as most of the federal agents at the Broadview facility are male.
Cole claims that this mistreatment has been poorly documented because immigrants, aside from being treated like “animals,” are often coerced into signing forms that waive their rights to appear in immigration court before a judge. Furthermore, ICE gives detainees few—if any—chances to obtain competent legal counsel.
“Absolutely no access to attorneys, and that’s outrageous. Because they are being told, and asked, and cajoled to sign immigration forms that waive their rights to appear in immigration court before an immigration judge and return to their country, and they’re being asked to sign forms in English, and many of them don’t speak English,” Cole said.
The lawsuit recounts at least one instance in which a federal immigration officer allowed a detainee named Willian Gimenez Gonzalez to call his wife using a cellphone. His wife was with an immigration attorney at the time of the call and, “when the officer heard [the attorney’s] voice and learned that he was an attorney, the officer told Gimenez Gonzalez to end the call. The officer then reached for the phone and hung up the call himself.”
Sources
Detainees at Broadview ICE Facility Denied Access to Legal Counsel, New Lawsuit Alleges
‘Like animals’: Lawsuit alleges disturbing conditions at Broadview ICE facility
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