In a press release, the Cook County Sheriff said that 21 individuals were held outside an immigration processing center of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Broadview, Illinois, but it did not identify them or give charges. One of the arrested people was Michael Woolf, the minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston, as a photo of Reuters unveiled.
ICE center in Broadview has been the hotbed of Chicago activists against the immigration crackdown by President Donald Trump in the city, which is a Democratic stronghold and restricts its collaboration with the federal immigration authorities.
Demonstrators have continued to fight with the police who have deployed use of tear gas, less-lethal rounds, flash-bang grenades and pepper balls since Trump intensified ICE operations in Chicago in September.
In October, a federal judge put a check on certain aggressive methods of crowd-control by ICE and Border Patrol in the city, such as the use of tear gas without sufficient notice.
The most recent detention followed the ruling of a separate federal judge who directed the release of a group of 13 alleged immigration offenders held by ICE in the Chicago region to be released by noon local time (1800 GMT), and potentially even more. The releases were ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Cummings who concluded that ICE was in breach of a legal agreement that signed in 2022 that restrictions warrantless arrests and uses traffic stops as a pretext to arrest.
The parent agency of ICE, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, did not instantly react to a request to comment on the protests that took place on Friday.
