BROADVIEW, Illinois: Federal officials reported the arrests of 13 people Friday protesting near an immigration facility outside Chicago that has been frequently targeted during President Donald Trump’s administration’s surge of immigration enforcement this fall.
As Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem met with employees inside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview, a crowd grew over several hours, some riled by newly installed barricades to separate them from law enforcement officers stationed outside.
Noem also accompanied agents Friday on a raid near a local Walmart store and later engaged in a tit-for-tat over unannounced visits — and even bathroom use — with the Broadview mayor.
Immigrants’ rights advocates and residents separately reported that federal agents had used tear gas near grocery or hardware stores they had targeted for enforcement elsewhere in Chicago on Friday and detained a city council member as she questioned the attempted arrest of a man. The federal government has restricted airspace over Broadview, officials said Friday, and Gov. JB Pritzker called for an investigation into an immigration raid on the city’s South Side early Tuesday morning.
Objections to barricades, local police step up
At the ICE facility, some protesters have aimed to block vehicles from going in or out of the area in recent weeks, part of growing pushback to a surge of immigration enforcement that began in early September. Called “Midway Blitz,” the US Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that it has resulted in more than 1,000 immigration arrests.
Federal agents have repeatedly fired tear gas, pepper balls and other projectiles toward crowds in response and at least five people have faced federal charges after being arrested in those clashes.
While Friday’s demonstration was quieter at Broadview, about 12 miles west of Chicago, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin reported 13 protesters were arrested. Charges were not released but McLaughlin said they included alleged assaults on federal officers.
The Illinois State Police, whose officers patrolled the grounds wearing riot helmets and holding batons, set up concrete barriers Thursday night to segregate protesters and designate spaces to demonstrate, with several adjacent streets being closed. Many demonstrators ignored the zones to protest on the other side of the building, saying the corrals prevented free speech rights.
Others were angered by local and state officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder with federal agents, including Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, the Bureau of Prisons and others. At one point, Illinois State Police joined Border Patrol in pushing back a crowd.
Jonny Bishop, a 28-year-old former teacher from Palatine, Illinois, and from a Mexican immigrant family, said the cooperation concerned him.
“ICE acts with impunity,” said Bishop, who’s previously encountered tear gas and pepper balls. “They know that they can shoot at us. They can tear gas us. And Broadview Police Department is not going to do anything.”
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it has restricted Chicago airspace, with Border Patrol citing “a credible threat” against law enforcement amid ongoing clashes with protesters at the Broadview site. The restriction, which is in effect from Oct. 1-12 and targets drones, extends in a radius of 15 nautical miles and includes Broadview. Critics question the length of time and the geographic breadth of the prohibition, worried about oversight of ICE operations.
Tear gas used on quiet street; city council member handcuffed at hospital
In a Chicago neighborhood, Andrew Denton, 39, stopped at a grocery store for lunch and heard honking from an SUV stopped behind a motorcycle parked in the middle of the street. He realized ICE agents were in the SUV and started shooting video just before the agents threw canisters of gas near passersby.
“There was no reason to use tear gas on the crowd,” he said. “No one was threatening them in any way.”
Denton said he immediately began tearing up. His nose began running, and he felt like he was choking. He said the 20 or so people in the area included seniors, families with children and children outside at recess at an adjacent elementary school.
“Every week, ICE escalates its violence against us,” said Demi Palecek, a military veteran and candidate for state representative. “With this level of escalation, it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed.”
In a near West Side neighborhood a few miles away, Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes shared video appearing to show her being handcuffed as she confronted federal agents at a hospital. She said a resident had fallen and broken his leg while chased by ICE agents who then transported him to the emergency room.
Fuentes arrived after an emergency room staff member called to say there were ICE agents in the room with him. In the video, none of them answers when she asks if they have a signed warrant. One agent then says, “You need to leave,” and handcuffs her from behind as she repeats her question about a warrant and then says, “You’re hurting me.” Fuentes said agents escorted her outside and released her.
Noem participates in raid, engages in restroom dispute
Noem, alongside Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent of the US Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, appeared on the Broadview building’s roof, surrounded by armed agents and a camera crew while standing beside a sniper’s post, according to footage shared online by conservative media personality Benny Johnson.
Johnson also posted video outside a Walmart store where he said agents, accompanied by Noem, had conducted a raid. Another video showed detainees in a parking lot where Noem noted “consequences for breaking the law and jeopardizing our law enforcement.”
Noem attempted to visit Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson at the village hall, but she was not there, and Noem was turned away when she asked to use the facilities.
“The city police wouldn’t even let us use the restroom,” she said in a video.
Broadview village spokesperson David Ormsby said Thompson later “returned her visit” at the ICE facility, where she too was refused access.
“We are distressed to hear that the bathrooms are unavailable at the ICE facility,” Ormsby said in a statement.
Governor decries anonymous, ‘inhumane’ tactics
Pritzker, the governor, lashed out at the Trump administration for the way federal agents, many of them masked to hide their faces, have treated protesters over the past month. He castigated officers’ “inhumane” tactics including slamming protesters to the ground, arresting a reporter and firing chemical agents into the crowds.
“It is clear federal agents cannot be trusted to act to protect the safety and constitutional rights of the public,” the Democrat said.
Pritzker also ordered state agencies to coordinate possible action to “hold federal agents accountable” for a raid on an apartment building in the city’s South Shore neighborhood early this week in which residents, regardless of status and including children, were detained for hours, some handcuffed. Children were separated from their parents, while officers smashed windows and tore through apartments, leaving piles of debris in the hallways.
Homeland Security officials said 37 undocumented immigrants were arrested, some with criminal histories and two allegedly members of a criminal Venezuelan gang.
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US Homeland Security chief visits Chicago area ICE facility as agents arrest 13, raid city neighborhoods
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US Homeland Security chief visits Chicago area ICE facility as agents arrest 13, raid city neighborhoods
Women fleeing Mali’s conflict say they were sexually assaulted but silence hides many more
DOUANKARA: The girl lay in a makeshift health clinic, her eyes glazed over and her mouth open, flies resting on her lips. Her chest barely moved. Drops of fevered sweat trickled down her forehead as medical workers hurried around her, attaching an IV drip.
It was the last moment to save her life, said Bethsabee Djoman Elidje, the women’s health manager, who led the clinic’s effort as the heart monitor beeped rapidly. The girl had an infection after a sexual assault, Elidje said, and had been in shock, untreated, for days.
Her family said the 14-year-old had been raped by Russian fighters who burst into their tent in Mali two weeks earlier. The Russians were members of Africa Corps, a new military unit under Russia’s defense ministry that replaced the Wagner mercenary group six months ago.
Men, women and children have been sexually assaulted by all sides during Mali’s decade-long conflict, the UN and aid workers say, with reports of gang rape and sexual slavery. But the real toll is hidden by a veil of shame that makes it difficult for women from conservative, patriarchal societies to seek help.
The silence that nearly killed the 14-year-old also hurts efforts to hold perpetrators accountable.
The AP learned of the alleged rape and four other alleged cases of sexual violence blamed on Africa Corps fighters, commonly described by Malians as the “white men,” while interviewing dozens of refugees at the border about other abuses such as beheadings and abductions.
Other combatants in Mali have been blamed for sexual assaults. The head of a women’s health clinic in the Mopti area told the AP it had treated 28 women in the last six months who said they had been assaulted by militants with the Al-Qaeda affiliated JNIM, the most powerful armed group in Mali.
The silence among Malian refugees has been striking.
In eastern Congo, which for decades has faced violence from dozens of armed groups, “we didn’t have to look for people,” said Mirjam Molenaar, the medical team leader in the border area for Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, who was stationed there last year. The women “came in huge numbers.”
It’s different here, she said: “People undergo these things and they live with it, and it shows in post-traumatic stress.”
Speechless after an assault
The aunt of the 14-year-old girl said the Africa Corps fighters marched everyone outside at gunpoint. The family couldn’t understand what they wanted. The men made them watch as they tied up the girl’s uncle and cut off his head.
Then two of the men took the 14-year-old into the tent as she tried to defend herself, and raped her. The family waited outside, unable to move.
“We were so scared that we were not even able to scream anymore,” the aunt recalled, as her mother sobbed quietly next to her. She, like other women, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, and the AP does not name victims of rape unless they agree to be named.
The girl emerged over a half-hour later, looking terrified. Then she saw her uncle’s body and screamed. She fainted. When she woke up, she had the eyes of someone “who was no longer there,” the aunt said.
The next morning, JNIM militants came and ordered the family to leave. They piled onto a donkey cart and set off toward the border. At any sound, they hid in the bushes, holding their breath.
The girl’s condition deteriorated during the three-day journey. When they arrived in Mauritania, she collapsed.
The AP came across her lying on the ground in the courtyard of a local family. Her family said they had not taken her to a clinic because they had no money.
“If you have nothing, how can you bring someone to a doctor?” the girl’s grandmother said between sobs. The AP took the family to a free clinic run by MSF. A doctor said the girl had signs of being raped.
The clinic had been functioning for barely a month and had seen three survivors of sexual violence, manager Elidje said.
“We are convinced that there are many cases like this,” she said. “But so far, very few patients come forward to seek treatment because it’s still a taboo subject here. It really takes time and patience for these women to open up and confide in someone so they can receive care. They only come when things have already become complicated, like the case we saw today.”
As Elidje tried to save the girl’s life, she asked the family to describe the incident. She did not speak Arabic and asked the local nurse to find out how many men carried out the assault. But the nurse was too ashamed to ask.
Scratch marks are part of story she could not tell
Thousands of new refugees from Mali, mostly women and children, have settled just inside Mauritania in recent weeks, in shelters made of fabric and branches. The nearest refugee camp is full, complicating efforts to treat and report sexual assaults.
Two recently arrived women discreetly pulled AP journalists aside, adjusting scarves over their faces. They said they had arrived a week ago after armed white men came to their village.
“They took everything from us. They burned our houses. They killed our husbands,” one said. “But that’s not all they did. They tried to rape us.”
The men entered the house where she was by herself and undressed her, she said, adding that she defended herself “by the grace of Allah.”
As she spoke, the second woman started crying and trembling. She had scratch marks on her neck. She was not capable of telling her story.
“We are still terrified by what we went through,” she said.
Separately, a third woman said that what the white men did to her in Mali last month when she was alone at home “stays between God and me.”
A fourth said she watched several armed white men drag her 18-year-old daughter into their house. She fled and has not seen her daughter again.
The women declined the suggestion to speak with aid workers, some of whom are locals. They said they were not ready to talk about it with anyone else.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to questions, but an information agency that the US State Department has called part of the “Kremlin’s disinformation campaign” called the AP’s investigation into Africa Corps fake news.
Wagner has a legacy of sexual abuse
Allegations of rapes and other sexual assaults were already occurring before Wagner transformed into Africa Corps.
One refugee told the AP she witnessed a mass rape in her village in March 2024.
“The Wagner group burned seven men alive in front of us with gasoline.” she said. Then they gathered the women and raped them, she said, including her 70-year-old mother.
“After my mother was raped, she couldn’t bear to live,” she said. Her mother died a month later.
In the worst-known case of sexual assault involving Russian fighters in Africa, the UN in a 2023 report said at least 58 women and girls had been raped or sexually assaulted in an attack on Moura village by Malian troops and others that witnesses described as “armed white men.”
In response, Mali’s government expelled the UN peacekeeping mission. Since then, gathering accurate data on the ground about conflict-related sexual violence has become nearly impossible.
The AP interviewed five of the women from Moura, who now stay in a displacement camp. They said they had been blindfolded and raped for hours by several men.
Three of the women said they hadn’t spoken about it to anyone apart from aid workers. The other two dared to tell their husbands, months later.
“I kept silent with my family for fear of being rejected or looked at differently. It’s shameful,” one said.
The 14-year-old whose family fled to Mauritania is recovering. She said she cannot remember anything since the attack. Her family and MSF said she is speaking to a psychiatrist — one of just six working in the country.
Aid workers are worried about others who never say a thing.
“It seems that conflict over the years gets worse and worse and worse. There is less regard for human life, whether it’s men, women or children,” said MSF’s Molenaar, and broke into tears. “It’s a battle.”
It was the last moment to save her life, said Bethsabee Djoman Elidje, the women’s health manager, who led the clinic’s effort as the heart monitor beeped rapidly. The girl had an infection after a sexual assault, Elidje said, and had been in shock, untreated, for days.
Her family said the 14-year-old had been raped by Russian fighters who burst into their tent in Mali two weeks earlier. The Russians were members of Africa Corps, a new military unit under Russia’s defense ministry that replaced the Wagner mercenary group six months ago.
Men, women and children have been sexually assaulted by all sides during Mali’s decade-long conflict, the UN and aid workers say, with reports of gang rape and sexual slavery. But the real toll is hidden by a veil of shame that makes it difficult for women from conservative, patriarchal societies to seek help.
The silence that nearly killed the 14-year-old also hurts efforts to hold perpetrators accountable.
The AP learned of the alleged rape and four other alleged cases of sexual violence blamed on Africa Corps fighters, commonly described by Malians as the “white men,” while interviewing dozens of refugees at the border about other abuses such as beheadings and abductions.
Other combatants in Mali have been blamed for sexual assaults. The head of a women’s health clinic in the Mopti area told the AP it had treated 28 women in the last six months who said they had been assaulted by militants with the Al-Qaeda affiliated JNIM, the most powerful armed group in Mali.
The silence among Malian refugees has been striking.
In eastern Congo, which for decades has faced violence from dozens of armed groups, “we didn’t have to look for people,” said Mirjam Molenaar, the medical team leader in the border area for Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, who was stationed there last year. The women “came in huge numbers.”
It’s different here, she said: “People undergo these things and they live with it, and it shows in post-traumatic stress.”
Speechless after an assault
The aunt of the 14-year-old girl said the Africa Corps fighters marched everyone outside at gunpoint. The family couldn’t understand what they wanted. The men made them watch as they tied up the girl’s uncle and cut off his head.
Then two of the men took the 14-year-old into the tent as she tried to defend herself, and raped her. The family waited outside, unable to move.
“We were so scared that we were not even able to scream anymore,” the aunt recalled, as her mother sobbed quietly next to her. She, like other women, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, and the AP does not name victims of rape unless they agree to be named.
The girl emerged over a half-hour later, looking terrified. Then she saw her uncle’s body and screamed. She fainted. When she woke up, she had the eyes of someone “who was no longer there,” the aunt said.
The next morning, JNIM militants came and ordered the family to leave. They piled onto a donkey cart and set off toward the border. At any sound, they hid in the bushes, holding their breath.
The girl’s condition deteriorated during the three-day journey. When they arrived in Mauritania, she collapsed.
The AP came across her lying on the ground in the courtyard of a local family. Her family said they had not taken her to a clinic because they had no money.
“If you have nothing, how can you bring someone to a doctor?” the girl’s grandmother said between sobs. The AP took the family to a free clinic run by MSF. A doctor said the girl had signs of being raped.
The clinic had been functioning for barely a month and had seen three survivors of sexual violence, manager Elidje said.
“We are convinced that there are many cases like this,” she said. “But so far, very few patients come forward to seek treatment because it’s still a taboo subject here. It really takes time and patience for these women to open up and confide in someone so they can receive care. They only come when things have already become complicated, like the case we saw today.”
As Elidje tried to save the girl’s life, she asked the family to describe the incident. She did not speak Arabic and asked the local nurse to find out how many men carried out the assault. But the nurse was too ashamed to ask.
Scratch marks are part of story she could not tell
Thousands of new refugees from Mali, mostly women and children, have settled just inside Mauritania in recent weeks, in shelters made of fabric and branches. The nearest refugee camp is full, complicating efforts to treat and report sexual assaults.
Two recently arrived women discreetly pulled AP journalists aside, adjusting scarves over their faces. They said they had arrived a week ago after armed white men came to their village.
“They took everything from us. They burned our houses. They killed our husbands,” one said. “But that’s not all they did. They tried to rape us.”
The men entered the house where she was by herself and undressed her, she said, adding that she defended herself “by the grace of Allah.”
As she spoke, the second woman started crying and trembling. She had scratch marks on her neck. She was not capable of telling her story.
“We are still terrified by what we went through,” she said.
Separately, a third woman said that what the white men did to her in Mali last month when she was alone at home “stays between God and me.”
A fourth said she watched several armed white men drag her 18-year-old daughter into their house. She fled and has not seen her daughter again.
The women declined the suggestion to speak with aid workers, some of whom are locals. They said they were not ready to talk about it with anyone else.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to questions, but an information agency that the US State Department has called part of the “Kremlin’s disinformation campaign” called the AP’s investigation into Africa Corps fake news.
Wagner has a legacy of sexual abuse
Allegations of rapes and other sexual assaults were already occurring before Wagner transformed into Africa Corps.
One refugee told the AP she witnessed a mass rape in her village in March 2024.
“The Wagner group burned seven men alive in front of us with gasoline.” she said. Then they gathered the women and raped them, she said, including her 70-year-old mother.
“After my mother was raped, she couldn’t bear to live,” she said. Her mother died a month later.
In the worst-known case of sexual assault involving Russian fighters in Africa, the UN in a 2023 report said at least 58 women and girls had been raped or sexually assaulted in an attack on Moura village by Malian troops and others that witnesses described as “armed white men.”
In response, Mali’s government expelled the UN peacekeeping mission. Since then, gathering accurate data on the ground about conflict-related sexual violence has become nearly impossible.
The AP interviewed five of the women from Moura, who now stay in a displacement camp. They said they had been blindfolded and raped for hours by several men.
Three of the women said they hadn’t spoken about it to anyone apart from aid workers. The other two dared to tell their husbands, months later.
“I kept silent with my family for fear of being rejected or looked at differently. It’s shameful,” one said.
The 14-year-old whose family fled to Mauritania is recovering. She said she cannot remember anything since the attack. Her family and MSF said she is speaking to a psychiatrist — one of just six working in the country.
Aid workers are worried about others who never say a thing.
“It seems that conflict over the years gets worse and worse and worse. There is less regard for human life, whether it’s men, women or children,” said MSF’s Molenaar, and broke into tears. “It’s a battle.”
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