Protests at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Chicago continued on Friday, with ICE and Border Patrol agents tear-gassing, pepper-spraying, and detaining demonstrators—and even throwing congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh to the ground.
“This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights,” Abughazaleh wrote on social media alongside two videos of the incident at the facility in Broadview, Illinois—which is key to ICE’s deadly “Operation Midway Blitz,” launched earlier this month as part of US President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
“What ICE just did to me was a violent abuse of power—and it’s still nothing compared to what they’re doing to immigrant communities. I’ve been fighting the right as a journalist and now I’m running for Congress to do the same in DC,” said Abughazaleh, a former producer at Media Matters for America and one of several Democrats in the 2026 race to represent Illinois’ 9th Congressional District.
“They weren’t showing their faces and almost none had visible badge numbers. There will likely never be any real accountability for the agent who grabbed me and threw me to the ground but we can have accountability for Trump and Tom Homan,” she added, referring to the president’s border czar. ”And that’s why I’m running for office.”
In a phone interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, the 26-year-old said ICE agents threw her to the ground twice:
“I wasn’t surprised, and that’s part of why we’re here,” Abughazaleh said. “Everyone here is at least a little bit scared, but mostly I’m angry and we need to get the facility shut down.”
ICE agents used tear gas and shot pepper balls, she said—some of which hit her legs—around 6:00 am, while shouting “your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk.”
She anticipates a “nasty” bruise on her right side.
“It’s more important than ever to stand with our neighbors, if not just for their basic human dignity,” Abughazaleh said. “I’m not here as a candidate, I’m here as an individual.”
The newspaper noted that “ICE did not respond immediately to specific questions about Abughazaleh, the use of non-lethal chemical agents, and the status of the protesters allegedly arrested during the clash.”
Abughazaleh used the incident to create a contrast between herself and some other candidates also hoping to replace Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, an 81-year-old who announced in May that she would not seek reelection.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, another candidate in Democrats’ crowded primary race for the 9th District, also joined the protest in Broadview on Friday. He told Block Club Chicago that “I’ve seen shocking violence.”
“I mean, throwing people to the ground, pepper balls, tear gas... It seems gratuitous, right? They’re trying to intimidate. They’ve got guys up there on the roof with cameras,” he added. “They’re trying to remind people that this is an administration that names and then targets its political enemies for physical and economic violence.”
Chicago Ald. Andre Vasquez (D-40) and Illinois Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton—a Democrat running to replace retiring US Sen. Dick Durbin—were also at the ICE facility on Friday.
Asked about agents’ violence toward protesters, Stratton told reporters that “people are here to peacefully protest. Look what we’ve been seeing over the last several weeks right here in Chicago: people being snatched off the streets, stuffed into unmarked vans, and with no due process.”
“We are seeing the Constitution being stomped upon, and just this week, again, attacks on First Amendment rights—and all of us need to be speaking with moral clarity and saying this is not right,” she added. “So I’m here to stand with Illinoisans who are protesting peacefully and make sure that I let them know that I stand with them.”
Organizers intend to continue demonstrating as long as the ICE operation continues in Chicago and its suburbs. In a statement ahead of Friday’s action, protester Britt Hodgdon stressed that “ICE doesn’t make me or my community safer.”
“If exercising my right to free speech gets me tear-gassed, then I’m not safe,” Hodgdon continued. “If my neighbors go missing into a deportation system where their families can’t find out where they’ve been taken, then my neighborhood is not safe. If there are ICE agents all over my city and they’re willing to shoot and kill someone who tries to get away from them—as they did in murdering Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez—then none of us are safe.”