BROADVIEW, Ill. – After weeks of escalating tensions and at times violent clashes between protesters and federal officers at an ICE detention facility, the Village of Broadview sued the Trump administration to end an “illegal occupation of Village property.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on Friday, names the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Sec. Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and Russell Hott, Chicago field office director for ICE, as defendants.
What we know:
The village alleged that DHS is engaging in a “continuous illegal occupation of Village property,” citing the construction of an eight-foot metal fence spanning the entire width of Beach Street, which is on the east side of the ICE detention facility.
DHS and ICE allegedly erected the metal fencing “without obtaining a permit and without giving the Village any warning or notice.”
Officials allege the fence blocks access to any property that happens to be located to the south, including industrial buildings that house private businesses. The fence gate is also padlocked which, the village alleges, “delays and hinders” the response of Broadview police and fire personnel.
The village also criticized the escalating tactics of ICE to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants, throughout the Chicago area.
“For many months now, DHS … has engaged in an unprecedented and chaotic nationwide campaign to target, round up, detain, and deport any person suspected of unlawfully residing in the United States,” the lawsuit said. “As numerous reports confirm, in carrying out this extreme campaign, DHS and ICE officials have willfully, recklessly, and routinely trampled over the rights of individual citizens and local governments, leaving a trail of damage and confusion in their wake.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for a response to the lawsuit.