The federal government will be required to hand over documents and video footage relating to conditions inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview that has become the center of increasing scrutiny and protests, a federal magistrate judge ruled Thursday.
At a hearing in federal court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura McNally granted several motions by the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit demanding that the feds provide data on detainee arrests and detention, documents relating to compliance with a judge-issued temporary restraining order, details about how the facility retains documents, information on other immigration facilities in northern Illinois and video footage from inside the facility.
The suit was filed late last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center against several of the Trump administration’s top immigration officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. The complaint alleges detainees held at the Broadview facility were denied access to lawyers and medicine and forced to live in squalid conditions where they slept on cold, crowded floors and often went without a hot meal.
McNally granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel, meaning the defendants did not provide information when the plaintiffs made requests, and the plaintiffs asked a judge to intervene. Ifeanyi Mogbana, an attorney for the defendants, argued the information would have been revealed during depositions.
McNally was at times visibly frustrated with Mogbana’s answers to her questions about information meant to be released during the discovery process of the case.
“These kinds of answers are not helpful. You’ve had notice of this motion for weeks,” McNally told Mogbana.
McNally did deny one request for more documents, saying the request was overly broad. An attorney for the plaintiffs, Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center, accepted the decision, saying the plaintiffs' priority was to access video footage.
The defendants have a deadline of Feb. 16 to release answers to most of the plaintiffs’ questions, including who makes decisions about operations at the Broadview facility and information about the future of the Broadview building if it’s met with another influx of detainees, McNally ordered.
Van Brunt raised concerns about the defendants releasing all the relevant information when asked. She said some documents referred to other pertinent documents that weren’t given to the plaintiffs, saying the plaintiffs needed “some kind of affirmation that the government is looking for these documents.”
“Right now, I don’t think they are, and we are missing a lot of evidence,” she said.
The lawsuit was initially filed in October of last year, when ongoing protests were active outside the Broadview facility. A federal judge then granted a temporary restraining order against the facility, requiring better conditions for sleeping, eating, hygiene and access to medicine.
The Broadview facility is meant to be a processing center, but the facility has been transformed into a de facto detention center. Harsh conditions at the facility included a toilet out in the open, a lack of toothpaste and soap, and people forced to sleep on the floor, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report and more than three hours of testimony in court last year.
