Abughazaleh, a New Republic contributor, was among a crowd demonstrating outside the facility, which is being used in a controversial immigration enforcement operation underway in Illinois. Ostensibly a “processing facility” intended to hold detainees for no more than 12 hours at a time, the center has reportedly held detainees “for days or even weeks,” Abughazaleh said in a recent YouTube video. Protesters have gathered weekly outside the facility, and on Friday were reportedly met with severe force: They were tackled, detained, tear-gassed, and pepper-sprayed by ICE agents, who were masked and clad in tactical gear.
This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights. pic.twitter.com/EneI3BAkPF
— Kat Abughazaleh (@KatAbughazaleh) September 19, 2025For the past three weeks, I’ve been attending protests at the Broadview ICE facility. There’s been a vigil there for almost two decades at this point, but they started ramping up after three protesters were arrested four weeks ago.
And then today, my friend and I woke up at 3 a.m. and went to the facility. We got there and were sitting on public property. ICE agents told us to essentially go away: “Your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk.” Around 6 a.m., they started bringing out a van, and we were in the way, so an ICE agent once again picked me up and threw me to the ground—they love throwing me. The video that people saw was after that. But during that first altercation, they took one of the protesters inside the facility—that’s the first time this has ever happened. We don’t know what happened to that person—we still don’t know where they are.
The second altercation was when a car was came out of the facility. I went to go aid another protester—once again, on public property. This is all on streets of the town of Broadview. That is when that video happened, when the officer picked me up and threw me on the ground.
The van drove away, and we don’t know where that protester is. In the chaos, they took two other people in. A little bit before that, they actually tried to take another protester, and I, and two other guys—it was literally like tug-of-war—ended up keeping him out of the facility.
I mean, frankly, I’m shocked that people are shocked about this. They did similar [things] last week. This was the most aggressive action they’ve taken. But once last week, twice today, ICE has picked me up and thrown me on the ground.
This is what ICE is. And we need to recognize that. It’s unfortunate that, just because I’m a congressional candidate, this is more newsworthy than if it would have happened to another protester. This shouldn’t be happening to anyone. And we don’t even know what is happening to the protesters who were kidnapped. We don’t know what is happening to our neighbors who were kidnapped and are being detained there. This is what Trump’s America looks like.
The right wants to eliminate free speech. They want to eliminate the First Amendment. They only want people to express speech that they specifically allow. There is no type of capitulation that will satisfy them except complete and utter submission, which is why solidarity is so important. It’s why having companies like ABC cowering to Trump, or universities cowering to Trump, why that does so much harm to all of us.
And that means that they can do whatever they want. This is the secret police. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And that means that they can designate anything a crime. They can designate protesting as a crime. They can say that speech is a crime. They can just assign any idea, ideology, condition, or act to you, and say, “Well, I saw it happen, so that’s what the truth is. And I can do whatever I want to this citizen, to this civilian, to this person who did nothing wrong, because I’m an ICE officer and I’m above the law.”
We need Democrats to put up an aggressive response to ICE. This facility in Illinois needs to be shut down, but these facilities across the country need to be shut down. We need more representatives like [New York City Comptroller] Brad Lander to be standing up for our communities. We need elected representatives at all levels of government to be demanding these facilities have any sort of transparency and abide by our own laws. And it is not controversial or tearing us apart to insist that basic humanity, basic decency, is not only respected, but expected in our country.
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