The National Immigrant Justice Center released a new report, “After the Blitz: What Our Chicago Neighbors are Facing In ICE Detention,” to shed light on the growing web of immigration detention centers where people were taken after being arrested in Chicagoland neighborhoods during the Trump administration’s so-called “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Most people abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents were first held at the notorious ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, where members of Congress, the courts, and media have extensively documented inhumane conditions. What happens to people next is more obscure, when ICE transfers them to one of the many county jails, federal and state prisons, and privately operated detention camps. Many of these facilities have recently newly contracted with ICE or increased their capacity as part of an expansion of the immigration detention system across the Midwest and the country. In these detention centers, people experience rampant due process violations, including malfunctioning ICE locators that leave people without means to be contacted by legal representation or loved ones, a lack of access to bond hearings, and pressure to sign “voluntary departure” forms despite being eligible for immigration legal relief. Detained individuals also face dangerous conditions and medical neglect.
“NIJC has provided legal counsel to hundreds of people who have been sent to more than two dozen different detention centers during the Trump administration’s most recent immigration raids in our Chicagoland communities. Too often, we race to find people in the system only to find that they have already been removed from the country without a chance to talk to a lawyer or any due process,” said Jennifer Babaie, associate director of NIJC’s Adult Detention Project. “Those we are able to make contact with are facing difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions, including lack of access to medicine and medical care and limited phone access to communicate with their families or lawyers.”
The report includes client stories, an interactive map of detention centers showing the expansion of new facilities and population increases across the system, as well as recommendations for steps members of Congress and other policy makers can take to stop the harm of the administration’s mass-deportation agenda and restore due process.
Read the Report:
