“Even When They Gas Us": Hundreds Brave Tear Gas, Pepper Balls to Protest ICE
Sarah Lazare Photographs by Isaac Silver
After the tear gas dispersed just enough to breathe, and street medics had flushed several people’s eyes with water, the hundreds protesting in Broadview on Friday morning — like they have regularly for weeks — did not go home and came back together in the street that runs perpendicular to the ICE detention center.
They held signs high above their heads reading “Migration Is Sacred” and “Protect Our Neighbors.” Some had red, puffy eyes. Others were coughing. But the crowd was determined, even defiant, and dozens started chanting and repeating: “I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win!”
It was a remarkable sentiment for the group who gathered early in the morning September 26 to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the agents who have detained hundreds of people in Chicagoland since the September 8 rollout of “Operation Midway Blitz.” (The Trump administration’s budget bill, signed on July 4, allocates $170 billion to immigration enforcement, more funding than most of the national armies around the world.)
The scene Friday morning looked like a rally outside a fortress. It was impossible to get close to the entrance of the detention center, with barricades and masked armored agents creating a perimeter with 10-foot tall metal barricades around the building, whose windows were boarded up with planks of wood.
Masked agents could be seen perched on rooftops, and peering out from behind barbed wire. They unpredictably and indiscriminately doused the crowd in tear gas, and shot pepper balls from the detention center’s rooftop and from ground level. At one point, agents shot tear gas into the crowd when young children were clearly visible and present.
At various points, there was no way to be in the thick of the protest without getting exposed to tear gas, or risking getting shot with pepper balls. At numerous points throughout the morning, agents fired from behind barbed wire fences, seemingly with no provocation — or even interaction — with protesters.
While many of the protesters joined specifically for the Friday morning protest, others have been demonstrating outside the detention facility for days.
“I woke up a little chilly,” says Tia, who has been at the site for days in a supply tent made of thin, white fabric, and requested I only use a first name. “But it was some of the most restful sleep I’ve gotten in years,” Tia says, carrying a flag for the American Indian Movement, “because I knew I was with good people.”
“I had been watching the protests on social media, and my anxiety built,” Tia says about why she was initially motivated to come several days ago. “I got a day off and I came here. I was shot within the first hour with pepper balls. It became more personal. I can’t sit with my mouth shut while they are committing crimes against humanity.”
Tia was standing near a barricade, where protesters and visitors had left messages of solidarity for those in detention. One message read, “you are seen, you are heard, you belong, stay strong. Families belong together.”
For weeks, protesters have gathered at the detention center, which has also been a destination for family members trying to find loved ones, as well as press conferences denouncing detentions and ICE’s operations. These Friday demonstrations have been a focal point, and protesters, like those this week, have returned even after facing crackdowns and violence from masked agents.
Last Friday, the National Lawyers Guild of Chicago denounced the violent federal law enforcement response to that protest.
“Federal agents pointed rifles at unarmed individuals, including marked legal observers,” the NLG wrote in a news release “The indiscriminate use of tear gas and pepper balls are still resulting in breathing and lung issues, chemical rashes, and welts more than 24 hours later.”
“No one can deny that the way ICE is treating protesters is unacceptable,” says Morsa, who also declined to give their last name and has been outside the detention center every day for a week. On Friday, Morsa was trying to clean up the mess that the pepper balls left behind.
“They were shooting into the parking lot nearby,” Morsa says, “and I was trying to clean it up.”
Jessica Darrow is a member of SEIU Local 73 and faculty at the Crown School of Social Work at the University of Chicago. She says it’s important to be at the rally as a union member because “the militarization of our community is a union issue, because no one is safe until all of us are safe.” She says her experience as a union member taught her about solidarity and “how to show up for people.”
The ICE escalation has been met with a surge of organizing that started months before “Operation Midway Blitz” began, as community groups and unions distribute know-your-rights information, patrol neighborhoods to alert residents to ICE’s presence, and organize protests against the crackdown.
But the violence and cruelty from ICE can be daunting.
On September 23, ICE detained two people outside of a homeless shelter in Budlong Woods. While the individuals were later released, organizers were alarmed by the incursion. On day one of his administration, President Trump rescinded a Biden-era memo that was supposed to place limits on immigration enforcement near sensitive areas, like homeless shelters, hospitals, and schools.
One man who lives close to the detention center and was sitting out on his front porch watching the protest tells me that “what ICE is doing is ridiculous.” He asked not to be identified in order to protect his privacy, has lived in the house since 2000, and explained that some neighbors down the street have been complaining about the tear gas wafting into their homes.
“ICE is giving our country a bad name,” he said.
“On a weekly basis, they’re finding new ways to attack our communities and separate families,” Brandon Lee, the communications director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told me earlier this week before the protest.
“What started as detaining people at domestic violence court, what started as approaching people randomly on the street on the Southwest Side, has escalated into neighborhood-scale operations.” He denounced federal authorities for “putting on a show with Border Patrol boats going down the Chicago River,” a reference to an incident on September 25 where agents were seen operating boats near Navy Pier and the Loop.
“All of these operations, whether it’s an ICE operation, or whether it’s one of the host of deputized agencies that have been given the responsibilities of ICE,” Lee says, “it’s all part of the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants.”
Miguel Alvelo Rivera, the executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago, told me last week at a Town Hall in Albany Park that now is a scary time for residents of Chicagoland. “We’re no strangers to confronting fear, but the scale of this feels very different, and it’s something that we’ve had to navigate as an organization,” he said.
“One thing that we reiterate is that fear is one of the tactics that they’re reliably using,” he said, “and that it is important for us to fight against it, to be daringly open, to be daringly in community with each other.”
This spirit was evident, too, at Friday’s gathering. At one point, a small group of musicians began singing the famed civil rights song, “We shall not be moved,” led by a guitarist and drummer.
“ICE out of Chicago, we shall not be moved,” they sang. “Even when they gas us, we shall not be moved.”
This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine.
Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.
