Two members of BEL were arrested by the ICE Gestapo this morning while protesting outside the Broadview ICE processing center. Broadview has morphed into a de facto detention camp, housing the father of some of ICE’s youngest victims, children aged three and eight, snatched while playing in Millennium Park over the weekend. Today, it also served as the backdrop for Kristi Noem, the US Secretary of Homeland Security.

Several hundred protestors gathered to denounce her visit and the wave of ICE kidnappings across Chicago. ICE responded not with words but with intimidation and violence: a tank rolled in, drones buzzed overhead, and agents in full tactical gear descended on the crowd. Batons were unleashed on protestors, and the arrests piled up.

ICE agents were able to attack and arrest protestors with ease because they had another weapon in their arsenal: Illinois State Troopers. The state troopers served as a stoic wall of protection for both the facility and the ravenous ICE agents. This is Pritzker’s Illinois, where the so-called “progressive” governor rails against Trump on TV while quietly lending his police to guard ICE thugs as they brutalize protestors. These politicians are not allies; they are cowards, liars, and active collaborators in ICE’s terror.

The lesson is clear: the deportation machine won’t be stopped by empty words or at the ballot box. It will be stopped by people in the streets, in the spirit of June’s LA uprisings and of those at Broadview today who faced ICE head-on. But we need more. More numbers, more militancy, more people ready to confront this system until it breaks. We must have the backs of those who were arrested in righteous protest – demand their immediate release and the dropping of all charges.