"At 5am on a warm September morning a small crowd of protesters assembles in the dark. They are gathering outside the Broadview immigration processing centre, a two-storey brick structure in the Chicago suburbs that has the ambience of a US outpost in a foreign war. Windows are boarded with plywood. Fences are lined with razor wire and black cloth. Masked Ice agents appear sporadically, dressed in military fatigues tactical helmets, flak jackets and rifles."
"The protesters begin to heckle each time an agent turns up for work or leaves through a chainlink gate. Quit your job! they chant. Take off your mask! The centre is a focal point in the resistance to Donald Trump's recent immigration crackdown in the city, portentously dubbed Operation Midway Blitz. It is here, following arrest, that hundreds of people targeted for deportation are brought to languish in squalid conditions before being sent to detention centres around the country."
"But the first people I meet are 22-year-old Milagros Pelayo and her sister, Yessenia Garcia, who is 16. They have been here at sunrise for the past five days, searching for information about their father, Rosalio, a janitor who was arrested by immigration officers at his home a week earlier. He is currently detained inside. They won't let us talk to him, Pelayo tells me. They won't give us any information."
At 5am a small crowd gathers outside the Broadview immigration processing centre in the Chicago suburbs. The site has the ambience of a US outpost in a foreign war. The facility features boarded windows, razor wire, and armed, masked ICE agents in military gear. Protesters heckle officers and chant, attempting to block government vehicles. The centre processes hundreds targeted for deportation who endure squalid conditions before transfer to detention centres. Two sisters search repeatedly for their detained janitor father but are denied contact and information. Protesters mobilize through civil disobedience to resist Operation Midway Blitz.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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