Thread by @ReichlinMelnick

🧵Today a federal judge is looking into horrific conditions inside ICE holding cells in Chicago, which until January were for stays under 12 hours absent exceptional circumstances.

People are now held for days — and ICE uses the threat of longer stays to get deportation orders.

The excerpts I'm posting are taken from over a dozen sworn declarations submitted in a lawsuit seeking to force ICE to improve conditions. I'll link to the docket at the end of the thread.

One thing comes through clearly in these declarations: the cells are FILTHY.

Multiple immigrants detained at the facility say ICE officer demanded that they sign deportation paperwork, refused to let them talk to lawyers, and threatened them when they wouldn't sign documents in English that they couldn't read.

Here's a representative example.

Cells inside the facility are being operated significantly above capacity, with people so crammed into cells that even extending your legs isn't possible and people have to sleep on the floor crammed in like sardines.

Here's one of many testimonies about the overcrowding.

There is no privacy at all at Broadview, and people are forced to use the bathroom in full view of other people held in detention and ICE officers. Men were able to see into the women's toilets and vice versa.

There was no water, soap, or hand sanitizer, adding to the filth.

Many of the people detained at Broadview report that they were denied access to sufficient food and water.

One man, held for 6 days, says he got a single small Subway sandwich and one bottle of water at each "meal" — except for two days, where there were only two meals all day.

Some people had access to a filthy sink above the toilet. Others didn't even have that, and had to beg for water — which was denied.

One man says that he only got bread with some mayo on it. A man with diabetes got no special food, as even a county jail would provide.

There is also universal agreement that medical care in the facility is terrible, and that people were not being provided access to care they needed.

This excerpt expresses a common theme; people who asked for help were largely ignored or given little treatment.

The declarations keep coming back to the ways in which the awful conditions themselves were used to coerce deportations.

Here, one lawyer describes how his client, who had a work permit, US citizen children, and a strong case for relief, was coerced into giving up his case.

One man who's been in the United States here for 20 years, and whose wife and kids live here, says he was physically threatened into signing his own deportation, with the ICE officer threatening to hurt him if he didn't sign the paper.

In total, there are over 35 sworn declarations from immigrants and US citizens detained at the facility and from lawyers representing people detained here.

They tell the story of a place where due process goes to die and the Constitution is ignored. courtlistener.com/docket/7183252…

At the end of today's hearing, a federal judge declared that the Broadview ICE facility — designed for short stays only — has become a prison.

He's says he's going to issue a Temporary Restraining Order forcing ICE to make changes.

24 hours from now, DHS may be forced to change how it operates in Chicago. The facility which it uses to detain people arrested in Operation Midway Blitz is going to be under court order, and the agency will be forced to make improvements.