By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, CHICAGO (AP):- Allegations of heartless conditions at a key Chicago-area immigration building are “disgusting,” a judge said Tuesday before hearing evidence that could lead to changes at a site that is a stop for people rounded up by the Trump administration.
The government is accused of denying detainees proper access to food, water and medical care and coercing them to sign documents they don’t understand. Without that knowledge, and without private communication with lawyers, they have unknowingly relinquished their rights and faced deportation, the lawsuit alleges.
“This is not an issue of not getting a toilet or a Fiji water bottle,” attorney Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center told the judge. “These are a set of dire conditions that when taken together paint a harrowing picture.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman presided at the hearing just days after Van Brunt’s group and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed the lawsuit and sought a temporary restraining order. The judge said the allegations are “disgusting.”
“To have to sleep on a floor next to an overflowing toilet — that’s obviously unconstitutional,” Gettleman said.
Attorney Jana Brady of the Justice Department acknowledged there are no beds at the Broadview building, just outside Chicago, because it was not intended to be a long-term detention site.
Authorities have “improved the operations” over the past few months, she said, adding there has been a “learning curve.”
“The conditions are not sufficiently serious,” Brady told the judge.
The lead plaintiffs in the case, Pablo Moreno Gonzalez and Felipe Agustin Zamacona, were in the courtroom Tuesday at the judge’s insistence. The Mexican immigrants, who’ve lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, had been held at Broadview until Friday but remain in government custody.
Testifying with the help of a translator, Moreno Gonzalez, 56, said he was arrested last week while waiting to start work. He said he was placed in a cell with 150 other people, with no beds, blankets, toothbrush or toothpaste.
“It was just really bad. … It was just too much,” Moreno Gonzalez, crying, told the judge.
For months advocates have raised concerns about conditions at the facility, which has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress, political candidates and activist groups. Lawyers and relatives of people held there have called it a de facto detention center, saying up to 200 people have been held at a time without access to legal counsel.
The Broadview center has also drawn demonstrations, leading to the arrests of numerous protesters. The demonstrations are at the center of a separate lawsuit from a coalition of news outlets and protesters who claim federal agents violated their First Amendment rights by repeatedly using tear gas and other weapons on them.