CHICAGO — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials overhaul its processing facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview in order to make it more humane.
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman’s ruling followed hours of testimony the previous day from undocumented immigrants who testified they were pressured to sign voluntary deportation forms in order to escape the facility’s overcrowded and filthy conditions.
“People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets,” the judge said during a brief hearing late Wednesday afternoon before issuing his temporary restraining order. “They shouldn’t be sleeping on top of each other. They shouldn’t be sleeping in plastic chairs. They shouldn’t be sleeping on concrete floors.”
In fact, sleeping was never an activity associated with ICE’s Broadview outpost for most of its 19-year history; the building in the small suburb is officially classified as a processing facility where detainees aren’t supposed to spend more than 12 hours at a time before being transferred to detention facilities.
But as federal immigration enforcement activity has ramped up under the second Trump administration, ICE changed its policy in June to allow for stays up to 72 hours. And since the launch of Operation Midway Blitz in early September, some detainees have been held for far longer — including a three-week stay mentioned in the Oct. 30 lawsuit that spurred this week’s legal action.
Read more: Lawsuit alleges ICE detainees denied access to counsel while held in ‘inhumane’ conditions
“It’s really become a prison,” Gettleman said.U.S. Department of Justice attorneys did not object to the judge’s order, which lasts for two weeks. Gettleman set a status hearing in the case for Nov. 19.
And just as the Eighth Amendment is meant to prevent cruel and unusual punishment in prison, the judge said conditions in the Broadway facility must pass “constitutional muster.”
Gettleman’s order mandates ICE officials provide detainees with a mat and bedding “with sufficient space to sleep.” All five undocumented immigrants who testified Tuesday described sleeping in plastic chairs or on the cold concrete floor. One man broke down in tears recalling his exhaustion after only being able to sleep a few minutes at a time due to the bright lights and extreme crowding.
“It was just too much,” Pablo Moreno Gonzalez said through an interpreter, hitting his own head in distress.
Moreno Gonzalez, a 56-year-old Mexican national who has been in the U.S. for 35 years, is one of the named plaintiffs in the case. He testified that after he was arrested on Oct. 29, immigration agents in Broadview presented him with voluntary deportation documents but he refused to sign them.
Several bullet points in Gettleman’s order are meant to address alleged abuses of immigration agents who — as claimed in the complaint and on the witness stand — pressured or outright lied to detainees about the voluntary deportation forms.
Felipe Agustin Zamacona, the other named plaintiff in the case, said that when he told the agent processing him through Broadview that he “wanted to go in front of a judge,” the agent told him he needed to sign “court papers.”
But Zamacona, who testified in English and completed high school and some college in Chicago, said he could read what the forms actually said: “self-deportation.”
READ NOW: Broadview temporary restraining order (PDF)
The judge ordered agents to “not misrepresent the contents of any papers they provide to detainees” and to provide translated versions of those documents, along with “reasonable time and opportunity” for detainees to read and understand them.
Attorneys for the putative class of Broadview detainees say that in order to fully understand what they’re being asked to sign, those being held in the facility need better access to attorneys.
A pair of immigration lawyers testified Tuesday that they’ve been largely unable to reach clients in Broadview, both because they’ve been turned away at the door and because phone calls to the facility go unanswered. Some phone numbers seemed to be disconnected, they said, and emails have not fared much better.
Detainees also complained that some pay phones in the facility are broken, and when they have been able to call their families, they had no privacy from other detainees and agents when family members were able to connect them with immigration attorneys through three-way calls or because they happened to be in the lawyer’s office.
Claudia Carolina Pereira Guevara, a former Broadview detainee who testified remotely from Honduras said her request to speak with a lawyer while in ICE custody last month was denied. Eventually, she signed the voluntary deportation form and is now separated from her two young children who are staying with her brother in Joliet.
Gettleman’s temporary restraining order directs immigration agents to provide detainees with a list of pro bono attorneys in both English and Spanish soon upon arrival to Broadview. The judge’s ruling also requires ICE to provide phone service so detainees can speak with lawyers “in private and without cost.”
Without an attorney’s guidance, Pereira Guevara testified that she also signed the voluntary deportation form because she was led to believe that “if I didn’t sign, I was going to be held there until I signed,” she said through an interpreter.
In the lawsuit, attorneys alleged ICE has gone from ignoring its own minimum standards for processing facilities like Broadview to using the filthy environment as leverage to pressure those held inside into signing the papers.But Gettleman’s temporary restraining order would also force ICE to clean up the facility — literally. The judge ordered agency officials to clean each holding cell at least twice per day and provide detainees with soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Under the order, detainees are entitled to a shower at least once every other day. Those who testified Tuesday described the smell of hundreds of people who hadn’t bathed or changed out of their clothes in days.
Additionally, those held in Broadview must be fed three full meals a day along with bottles of water whenever they ask for them. Detainees testified that they were only given cold sandwiches two or three times a day and were ignored when they asked for more water.
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