Lawsuit alleges ICE detainees denied access to counsel while held in
‘inhumane’ conditions
[November 03, 2025]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — For several weeks in September and early October, highly
publicized protests in the small suburb of Broadview roughly 12 miles
west of Chicago focused attention to a little-known facility operated by
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The building kept a low profile for most of its 19-year history. There
was a weekly prayer vigil, started by a pair of nuns in 2007, usually
the only crowds attracted to the facility. But the launch of the Trump
administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” Chicago-area immigration
enforcement campaign last month drew protesters to Broadview, where they
were met by tear gas and pepper balls.
But for all the sudden public awareness of the ICE processing center —
thanks to the commotion outside of its walls — the facility’s interior
is a “black box” in which detainees are denied access to legal counsel,
according to a federal lawsuit filed this week.
Undocumented immigrants languish for days in squalid conditions with
little food or water, sometimes so overcrowded that there’s barely
enough room to lay on the floor, according to the complaint.
Attorneys for the detainees allege ICE has gone from ignoring its own
minimum standards for such facilities to using the filthy environment as
leverage to pressure those held inside into signing voluntary departure
forms.
“Officers have used a variety of verbal threats in order to coerce
detainees into signing forms, including threatening a detainee that they
will remain in horrific conditions inside Broadview until they sign,”
the complaint said.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday, alleges officers respond with
“threats, abuse, or contempt” when detainees ask for basic necessities.
Some Broadview arrestees claimed in the complaint that they were ignored
or belittled when they asked for water or, in one case, needed medical
attention for a possible heart attack, the lawsuit alleged.
“Broadview is a black hole, and federal officials are acting with
impunity inside its walls.”
The facility is only meant to hold arrestees for a maximum of 12 hours
before they’re moved to the next part of the immigration adjudication
process. The building isn’t equipped with cots or showers. Detainees
held in its four main holding cells must use toilets in plain view of
everyone else, including those of the opposite gender and immigration
agents — and that’s if the toilets are even working, according to the
lawsuit.
Due to a number of policy changes the Trump administration and has made
this year, immigration agents have been arresting and detaining more
undocumented immigrants than in previous eras. Longer wait times for
transfers to out-of-state detention facilities or flights out of O’Hare
Airport has meant overcrowding at Broadview.
And members of Illinois’ congressional delegation have been repeatedly
turned away from the facility this year. The refusal from ICE officials
to let the elected officials tour Broadview is an about-face from
previous policy. Attorneys have also been turned away.
Reaching their clients inside the facility by phone is also a logistical
challenge, the lawsuit said, which has caused some detainees to make
permanent decisions with imperfect information.
The complaint cites the case of a widower who was the sole caretaker of
four children who are all U.S. citizens. The 56-year-old had entered the
country legally and had a work permit and was a fully certified union
roofer.
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A protestor dressed in striped clothing reminiscent of uniforms worn
by those imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps walks with a sign
outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing
facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview on Oct. 9. (Capitol News
Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
“Unbeknownst to him, at the time he signed the voluntary departure, his
lawyer had already secured a court date for a bond hearing for the next
day,” according to the lawsuit. “But by that afternoon, he was on the
other side of the border. His children, who are already grieving the
loss of their mother from earlier this year, now must process the sudden
loss of their father.”
In a hearing Friday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman put
some of the blame for Broadview’s overcrowding on state law, which
prohibits law enforcement agencies from entering into contracts to
detain people arrested on immigration charges.
“The state of Illinois doesn’t allow immigration detainees to be housed
in Illinois facilities, otherwise we wouldn’t be having some of the
problems we’ve been encountering,” he said.
Gettleman scheduled a fuller hearing on the case for Tuesday morning,
telling attorneys he’d make the “entire day available.” By then, U.S.
Department of Justice attorneys said they’d have at least some response
from the Trump administration about the allegations in the lawsuit.
“If these facts are correct … then the sooner the better,” Gettleman
said.
Appeals court nixes daily Bovino hearings
Meanwhile on Friday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals permanently
blocked a federal judge’s order that would have required U.S. Customs
and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino to appear in court for daily
check-ins on immigration agents’ use of force against civilians.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis had ordered Bovino to show up for
end-of-day appearances in her courtroom after the longtime Border Patrol
official spent an hour on the witness stand Tuesday. During that
hearing, the judge went through various recent alleged violations of her
Oct. 9 temporary restraining order restricting immigration agents’ use
of force against civilians, including the deployment of tear gas in four
separate Chicago neighborhoods three days in a row last week.
But less than two hours before Bovino was set to appear for the first of
the daily court-ordered reports on Wednesday, the 7th Circuit issued a
temporary stay on Ellis’ order. And on Friday, the appeals panel said
the judge’s extraordinary order set her up to be an “inquisitor rather
than … a neutral adjudicator” as well as a “supervisor of Chief Bovino’s
activities, intruding into personnel management decisions of the
Executive Branch.”
“These two problems are related and lead us to conclude that the order
infringes on the separation of powers,” the appellate judges wrote.
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