Recently I’ve participated in several nonviolent protests at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s processing center in Broadview, Illinois, where people detained in and around Chicago are held. It has been deeply troubling to see how the Department of Homeland Security has depicted us.
Protests at the Broadview facility are not a recent development. The tradition of a weekly protest and prayer vigil—in solidarity with the immigrants detained inside—was initiated in 2007 by two Catholic sisters, Pat Murphy and JoAnn Persch. Every Friday morning, in bitter cold and in scorching heat, a small group joined them there. Their vigil included interfaith prayers: for the safety and well-being of the detainees, for the mercy and consideration of the ICE officers, and to awaken the conscience of political leaders with the power to change policy.
Read our latest issue or browse back issues.
In recent weeks, DHS has depicted the Broadview protesters as “radical leftists,” a “violent mob,” “psychopaths,” “angry rioters,” and “paid professional agitators.” This kind of propaganda is being pushed mightily by the Trump administration, but it bears little connection to reality. Some of the protesters, angry at the injustice, yell at ICE officers or sit down in front of ICE vans (which are bringing in more detainees) and get arrested. But these are nonviolent, courageous acts of civil disobedience, in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and thousands of others. The most overt violence I’ve experienced at Broadview was when ICE agents on the adjacent roof shot tear gas and rubber bullets at us.
So who are they really, these protesters who show up each week with their signs and guitars and drums and prayer books and rosaries? They are a mix, of course, and represent a range of political backgrounds. But I think most of them are drawn to these protests by two fundamental tenets, both of them quintessentially American: that detainees have the right to due process and humane treatment under the law and that all people have the right to free speech.
On October 11, several priests led a eucharistic procession from St. Eulalia Catholic Church in nearby Maywood to the detention center’s gates, where they sought to get inside to offer communion to the detainees. In the program that preceded the march, Sen. Dick Durbin offered words of encouragement and spoke about his mother’s migration to the US from Lithuania. “We need to stand up for one another . . . and remind people that hate and fear are not part of America,” he said. Katrina Thompson, the mayor of Broadview, spoke as well.
Nearly a thousand of us marched through Maywood that day. Most wore yellow T shirts that were handed out at the church. “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones,” the shirts proclaimed, “and has lifted up the lowly.” As we marched, we sang hymns and recited prayers for the detainees. Participants were notably kind and respectful—of each other and of the people in the neighborhood, some of whom came out to sit on their porches as we went by.
When we finally arrived at the ICE facility, we encountered a line of state troopers. The priests asked them if they could go inside and give communion to the detainees. The troopers responded respectfully and promptly called inside to the ICE officers—who rejected the request, as they had before. We continued to sing and pray at the gate for a while and then slowly dispersed.
There were a thousand protesters there, but there was no violence and no riot. This was not an angry mob, just a bunch of regular people who have jobs and families and busy lives. We showed up because of our growing concern about the war our government is waging against immigrants, who are simply trying to go about their daily lives without being assaulted or arrested.
What a radical idea that is.
********************
Tom Montgomery Fate chats with the Century's community engagement editor Jon Mathieu about the context and religious aspects of the peaceful protests at the ICE facility in Broadview, IL.
