Interview with Andy Thayer: Close the ICE Broadview Detention Facility Now!
Andy Thayer is a videographer, a socialist activist, and student of history and political science. Andy spoke with Kim Gasper-Rabuck for an interview for Puntorojo magazine at an October 4th community forum in Madison, Wisconsin coordinated by the Free The 15 Defense Committee that showcased a new documentary called “Melting Ice.” This film tells the stories of the mass movement that defeated the ICE surge in Minnesota in early 2026 known as “Operation: Metro Surge”, when organized neighborhood networks pushed ICE block-by-block out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. The forum featured several speakers who participated in the struggle, including a panel featuring Kip Hedges, the producer of the film. Andy spoke as one of the Chicago Anti-Broadview Detention Facility protestors. He painstakingly documents everything so others can learn from and join in the struggle to free the immigrants trapped inside and close to close Broadview.
Kim: According to US District Judge Robert Gettleman, “The conditions in the Broadview Detention Facility are unnecessarily cruel”. People are “sleeping shoulder to shoulder, next to filthy toilets, that are overflowing, surrounded by human waste.” People are being given a few bottles of water and a cold sandwich a day. People are being denied access to legal counsel and are being coerced into signing voluntary deportation papers, often not understanding what they are being pushed to sign. Given the abysmal conditions inside the Broadview concentration camp, could you share some of the history of this facility?
Andy: Broadview has a history that pre-dates the start of Trump’s “Operation: Midway Blitz”, which began on Sept 8 of 2025. DHS and ICE surged into Chicago to allegedly “crack down” on undocumented people with “criminal records”. In reality, it was chosen and targeted because it’s a “blue” state and a “sanctuary city”.
Broadview has held people in miserable conditions since 9/11, 2001. While I am not a religious person, to their credit, religious figures from various denominations have been going there weekly to try to minister to people inside and have been protesting for the last couple of decades. With the start of Midway Blitz, things got worse, much worse. Everything has totally blown up in terms of people being abducted without cause. You’ve got a supreme court that has legitimized what I think is the worst and most racist decision in the US since the Dred Scott Decision. The Kristi Noem Secretary Homeland Security ET AL v. Pedro Vasquez Perdomo Decision which found in favor of the “The Immigration and Nationality Act” means that it is now completely legal to racially profile people.
And ICE is grabbing people, right, left, forwards, and backwards across Chicago regardless of their immigration status, regardless of whether they are citizens or not, and simply because they look like they might possibly be from south of the US-Mexico border. This outrageous behavior has prompted a whole series of spontaneous protests that were not centrally organized. There are people out there that have been protesting almost every single week, perhaps every single weekend. This resistance to Trump’s attacks, prompted the right wing to retaliate with the arrest of “The Broadview Six“. This case revolved around a federal indictment of six people protesting outside the facility, which included so-called “progressive Democratic Party politicians” who were accused of conspiracy to impede federal operations. The case was later dropped but the point of the arrests was political, they were attacked because they were Democrats in a blue city, in a blue state.
Frankly, we have seen the same thing with the Minneapolis 15, with Trump going after fifteen rapid responders who have said repeatedly they were just one of the tens of thousands of Minnesotans who were engaged in protecting their neighbors. They resisted “the surge”, and ICE picked fifteen of them up for doing just that, but also because they are proud anarchists. I’m not an anarchist, but if people are being singled out because of their political beliefs, as the Minnesota 15 are, and as the Broadview 6 were, then it is something everyone should oppose.
Kim: Andy, could you describe the way that the local and state governments have handled the crisis at Broadview?
Andy: Yes, The Cook County State’s Attorney is the person responsible for charging and prosecuting anyone in Cook County who commits a crime. The Broadview Detention Center is in Cook County. Her name is Eileen O’Neill Burke. She has claimed that not one single case of a federal crime has come to her office, not from the Chicago Police Department, or the Franklin Police Department, or anywhere else. None of these so-called “law enforcement agencies”, referred a single alleged case of a crime for investigation and prosecution to her office. This speaks volumes about the failure of the people who run those “law enforcement agencies” including the Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson (D), the Cook County Board President, Tony Preckwinkle (D), and of course the Governor, Governor J. B. Pritzker (D), who is angling to become the Democratic nominee for the 2028 presidential election.
Kim: There have been claims from the right that J.B. Pritzker refused to allow State Police to support ICE because of Illinois’ Sanctuary Laws.
Andy: I mean, on the contrary, it was in fact the state police who were taking the lead on actually essentially doing the crowd control out at Broadview, over and over again! I caught them on film all the time. So what has happened is rather than the already obscenely funded Department of Homeland Security and ICE paying for and doing crowd control, the State of Illinois was doing it for them!
Kim: It would appear we are going to need larger and more prolonged protests to even begin to stop the massive attacks on Immigrants and on protesters.
Andy: We haven’t even had so-called sacrificial lambs yet. I mean the history in the Twin Cities, as well as here in Chicago, is that when there is a huge protest movement you can actually get cops tried and convicted for the crimes they commit. I mean we had it in the Twin Cities obviously with the murder of George Floyd and we had it here in Chicago with the murder of Laquan Mcdonald, but it takes an enormous movement to even get that very small measure of justice. And I think you know, those movements are important because they teach people about how change is actually made, and how the problem is The System, because if the system truly worked the way it’s “supposed to”, where there’s the law, and everyone is supposed to follow these nice pieces of paper, known as The Constitution, the Bill of Rights and so forth…If that were the case, you wouldn’t have to have these immense mobilizations to get even those small measures of justice. And I think this is where the Twin Cities have really shown the way. Because you look at the success you are seeing in terms of people waking up to the injustice of what the Minnesota 15 or the Broadview 6 are facing here, you wouldn’t have had this kind of movement were it not for the mass pressure from below. People are coming to the conclusion that this is totally outrageous. You can contrast their trajectory for example of the Broadview 6 here, with what happened to the Prairie Land Defendants where there wasn’t that mass movement.
Kim: While the tens of thousands of Minnesotans were able to push “The Surge” out of Minneapolis, it would appear that the new policy is to commit what one could call smash and grabs, where small numbers of ICE go to a work site, apartment building or a court house and arrest a small number of people, but are doing so rapid fire across the country.
Andy: Yeah, I mean they’ve been able to, thanks to the current budget, hire thousands of these ICE thugs, and here in Chicago their primary tactic seems to be taking people at their required immigration hearings. As well as for example going into domestic violence courts, which has a horribly perverse impact on people who suffer actual crimes. If people are afraid to go to domestic violence courts, what kind of license does that give abusers.
Kim: And now it’s even going to the hospital. People are terrified to go to the emergency room, to take their kids to school, to go to their own jobs, to go buy groceries.
Andy: Well, this is where the Supreme Court’s decision about racial profiling is so utterly despicable because clearly ICE and DHS doesn’t give a damn about people’s citizenship status. If you’re brown, you’re guilty, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or not. Whether you followed all of the immigration laws, procedures and so forth…People are being whisked away from immigration courts here in Chicago before there is any chance of their attorneys filing the documents necessary to protect them. I mean people have followed every single jot of immigration law, which anyone who knows anything about it knows the hoops they are forced to jump through. They are nothing like what my ancestors had to go through when they came to this country.
It’s like ok, we, (US bosses) need your hands, your labor, come on in. That’s what’s so disgusting about the right wing trope about how people have to follow the laws, blah blah blah. If you have ever examined just how byzantine those laws that people are forced to comply with are, it’s shocking.
Kim: We have definitely established how difficult things are and the fact that people are willing to fight back. Unfortunately here in WI, where I am located, we have a not for profit org that insists people not run, not resist. They don’t even believe mass numbers of whistles should be deployed. They aren’t in the business of organizing massive rapid response teams even though thousands and thousands of people in WI have been radicalized as we share a border with Minnesota. Not organizing thousands who truly want to do so seems not only irresponsible, but straight up dangerous.
Andy: I mean we have of course had instances, like in the case of Silveria Vegas Gonzalez where they were attempting to abduct him, he drove away, and they shot him to death. So I can understand people saying, you know, think twice about whether you try and get away or not. On the other hand, if you are abducted, your constitutional rights in so many ways, and in so many instances, go right out the window. I mean people are being deported to countries that they have never even been in!
I mean people, you know, from Central or South America, being whisked away across the Atlantic Ocean, to a country where they have absolutely no family ties, where they don’t even speak the language. If you’re already in custody, you shouldn’t resist because it’s a felony, but the other, that can’t be a hard and fast rule. People, immigrants, have learned, from their own experiences, that they can’t count on the cops, at any damned level, to protect their rights, and so what you do becomes a tactical issue. And, this whole notion that people aren’t being organized to warn people of impending abductions is utterly irresponsible.
Kim: Unfortunately, here in Madison people are being taught by that same non-profit that they can in fact count on the police and the sheriff’s department. I mean they will have a dinner for 200 Latin community members and invite the chief of police to speak there, on the same stage that you were on Oct 4th, talking to migrants about how they’re not going to cooperate with federal agencies if those federal agencies do anything illegal. Frankly, it is shocking.
Andy: And this, you know, “that the state is going to defend us” at whatever level is such a mis-education and flies in the face of the history of what police agencies around the country have done. That’s political malpractice. That’s what it is, it’s political malpractice.
Kim: And in contrast Andy, while they’re not organizing mass rapid response teams, and even oppose others doing it, they are actively holding training sessions for hundreds of people to go door-to-door to get the vote out for the Democratic Party for the mid-term elections Nov 4th.
Andy: Well, and you know, one thing that struck me is, was when I was up in Madison at the wonderful meeting that you all hosted, that struck me, was really getting the feeling that the hang-over following the defeat of the public unions, 11 years back, under Governor Walker, how that defeat still hangs over your city. And that, unfortunately reinforces these ultra cautious, ultra conservative political responses, by people who should, frankly, know better.
Kim: While there are no rapid response trainings, yet there’s plenty of “get out the vote” training. It raises the whole question of: vote for whom? and, which side are the democrats on?
Andy: Yeah, and we’ve got problems with NGOs in Chicago, and we’re seeing it right now with even our local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. I mean, they’re spending all of their resources on the elections. If you think the Democrats are going to save us, I’ve got several bridges here in Chicago that are in fine condition, that I’d be very happy to sell you…
And, of course we do need to protect the vote. We do need to be prepared for ICE or any other thugs Trump might send to the poles to intimidate people. The vote is one of the few democratic forms that are left, so we have to defend them. But don’t think that voting will free you. It’s always the people themselves, organized and mobilized in the streets that is where our power lies.
Kim: In closing could you sum up your take on how to move forward?
Andy: I’m a revolutionary socialist. I believe we need sweeping systemic changes, such as we saw hints of in the 1930’s and 1960’s, but ultimately we need to get rid of capitalism itself, because that is at the core. It’s not good enough for us to create a great movement for 5 or 10 years that peels back some of the worst offenses of capitalism for a period of time, only to see the capitalist class and their political operatives counter attack, go on the offensive, and dismantle whatever reform or gain we won, and place us back on the defensive.
Kim: Thank you so much for your time Andy, I really appreciate it!
Kim Gasper-Rabuck is a former middle school teacher and full-time parent. She has been an activist and organizer who has worked to stop wars, defend abortion, fight police brutality, support strikes, and fight for socialist ideas and organization for the last 35 years.
