Chicago faith leaders were once again denied entry to pray inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview. This time, on Christmas Eve.
A handful of faith leaders and other community members walked up to the facility doors at 1930 Beach St. on Wednesday morning to pray with detainees inside the facility in celebration of the birth of Christ.
But they were denied.
Instead, the faith leaders led a prayer and sang hymns near the facility’s doorstep, and vowed to try again.
“We’re here today because we want to make the statement, everybody deserves prayer and pastoral care, especially on Christmas Eve,” said the Rev. Marshall Hatch from New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church.
The leaders said they sent requests to immigration authorities to enter the facility and lead a prayer on Christmas Eve but received no response. They were also on the phone with officials to try to negotiate access, they said. But as they walked up to the doors of the Broadview site at about 10 a.m., they were refused.
“This is not normal to deny people pastoral care, it’s just that simple,” said Hatch, who has been a pastor for over 40 years and prayed with detainees on death row.
The Rev. Brendan Curran said faith leaders had been granted access to the Broadview detention center for years until recently.
“We’d board the bus, we would pray with the detainees. This was a normal protocol,” said Curran, who is a member of the Resurrection Project and International Dominican Commission for Justice and Peace. “Then the federal government saw, for some reason, that these things needed to be stopped.”
Prayer and communion in detention centers offer dignity, Curran said.
More than 4,300 people have been arrested during the federal government’s immigration crackdown dubbed Operation Midway Blitz, which began in September, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Yet most detainees appear to have no significant criminal record, data gathered by the Tribune and a federal lawsuit show.
Conditions inside the processing facility have reportedly been poor. A federal judge in November ordered government officials to provide immigration detainees enough food, water and bed space, among other remedies, finding that conditions in Broadview do not “pass constitutional muster.”
“It has really become a prison,” U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said, according to Tribune reporting. “The conditions would be found unconstitutional even in the context of prisons holding convicted felons, but these are not convicted felons. These are civil detainees.”
Earlier this month a Chicago business owner from Bulgaria, Nenko Gantchev, 56, died in ICE custody at a separate correctional facility in North Lake, Michigan, ABC 7 reported. At least 30 people have died in ICE custody this year, the highest in two decades, according to Reuters.
In October, more than four dozen ministers gathered to pray for detainees outside the Broadview facility, and more than 250 local Christian clergy across denominations signed an open letter condemning aggressive ICE tactics.
Outside the Broadview facility, a chalk-written message on the ground read “The whole world is watching” while religious leaders, alongside U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, shivered in the cold and prayed. Some wore keffiyehs, Palestinian scarves, around their necks while others wore colorful stoles.
The Rev. Paco Amador at New Life Community Church in Little Village said he prayed for a change to the national narrative that frames immigrants as criminals.
“We are not people who have come to take; we are people who have come to give,” Amador said.
He also prayed for the reunification of families separated by immigration enforcement, fathers separated from their children and wives torn away from their husbands, on this holiday season.
Kristina Sinks, 28, a United Methodist Church minister, said she has been trying to enter the facility since September. She has tried to go in to pray and give communion and essential items, such as water bottles and towels. She has been rejected every time, she said.
On Wednesday, she and other faith leaders “prayed over the facility that any who passed through here will be blessed,” she said.
Sinks said she is open to trying to enter the facility again to lead prayer.