As the darkness of night comes to an end and the rose-pink glow of dawn starts to appear, nuns JoAnn and Pat wait in their dark car.
For most people, the rising of the sun brings the promise of a new day. But for the immigrants awaiting deportation inside the Broadview Detention Center, a temporary staging facility for people in the U.S. illegally who are being processed in and out of Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, any hope of living the American Dream is lost.
For nearly a decade, on most Friday mornings, Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy, both nuns with the Sisters of Mercy religious order, have stood outside the Broadview Detention Center, 1930 Beach St., Broadview, Ill., and prayed. The detained immigrants inside the facility will be bused to the Gary/Chicago International Airport, where they will eventually be flown out of the country.
“We’re here to stand in solidarity with those being deported today and with their families,” Persch said. “But we also pray for immigration officers, elected officials and our president.”
ICE Air Operations, the transportation division within the ICE Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, first began using the Gary/Chicago International Airport for detainee removal flights in June 2013, according to ICE officials.
IAO conducts one flight per week departing from the Gary/Chicago International Airport, transporting Mexican nationals to the Texas-Mexico border, where they are then escorted into Mexico. There were a total of 62 IAO flights in and out of the Gary/Chicago International Airport in 2016, according to an analysis of the airport’s flight records.
On this February morning, Persch, 82, occasionally places a tissue over her mouth, silencing the faint sound of her fading cold. She doesn’t let the freezing weather prevent her from advocating for those about to be flown out of the United States.
“It’s a very sad day for us,” Persch said. “We know most of them won’t see their families again. As you can imagine, the families that get here can be so distraught.”
Over the years, what started as a small prayer group blossomed into a prayer vigil with a core group of at least 30 people who attend regularly.
As the prayer vigil gets started, just paces away from the facility’s doorsteps, family members of the detained immigrants exit the building dejected, often in tears. Yet not even the tears of crestfallen family members douse Persch’s and Murphy’s burning ambition to defend the rights of refugees and immigrants.
Every Friday, detainees sit shackled in silence on a bus waiting to be driven to Gary. The only sound comes from Murphy, who says a prayer through a hole in the Plexiglas that separates them.
“We pray and talk to them a few minutes and let them know we aren’t with this system at all,” Murphy said. “We say a protection prayer and let them know we’ll be with them on their journey to their home country.”
There are 14 men and women in need of prayer on this day.
Little-known departures
The weekly ICE flights departing Gary typically make a stop at the Kansas City International Airport, flight records show. The flight stops in Kansas City to pick up additional ICE detainees before continuing to Brownsville, Texas, where Mexican nationals are bused to the border and escorted into Mexico, officials said.
The majority of the other ICE flights departing Gary fly into Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana, where detainees are placed on charter flights to countries other than Mexico.
Additionally, nearly every week, ICE detainees are flown into Gary from Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport in Cameron County, Texas, on the southern tip of Texas bordering Mexico, records show. Detainees who are flown into Gary from there are transported to various county jails in Illinois and Wisconsin, where ICE contracts detention space, according to ICE officials.
The Rev. Cheryl Rivera, who last year spearheaded a protest that helped push the Gary Common Council to vote against allowing the GEO Group to build an immigration detention center across the street from the airport, said she does not support an operation that assists in “people being ripped away from their families.”
“We are very concerned,” said Rivera, director of the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations. “We will be having some actions and reactions to the deportations at the Gary airport. We want no part of that.”
With President Donald Trump recently signing an executive order prohibiting immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from entering the United States — an order on hold after the latest court decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday — Murphy said the current immigration climate is frightening. But her frustration doesn’t lie exclusively with the current administration.
“The reason we’re in this whole mess is because no administration ever took the bull by the horns and did anything to reform this whole broken system,” she said. “It’s a mess.”
ICE is responsible for removing immigrants who could present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally.
During the 2016 fiscal year, ICE removed 240,255 people, 58 percent of whom were previously convicted of a crime, according to the agency’s most recent published statistics.
The human toll
As the doors to the detention center shut behind her, Elizabeth Jauregui crumbled to the ground in tears.
“I might never see him again, and that’s heartbreaking,” Jauregui said, wiping the tears from her face. Although her husband, Carlos Villa, had been detained since September, Jauregui said it’s still going to be tough trying to cope with him being deported to Mexico. With a 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son at home, she said that despite the unbearable weight of separation from her husband, she has no choice but to muster up enough strength to move forward.
“It doesn’t stop,” she said. “I have children at the house. They’re not his, but he found and accepted me with two children. I have to keep on moving just one step at a time.”
Jauregui, of Elgin, Ill., said she and her husband discussed possible visitation trips in the future, but with current hysteria surrounding the executive order, she’s unsure if they’ll be able to reunite.
“The law is the law, and there’s nothing I can do to change that, and it’s not getting better apparently,” she said. “We just have to abide and do what we can.”
Outside the detention facility, with the American flag hoisted overhead, dozens of people gather for the weekly prayer vigil.
“Today I weep with those being sent away and with all those they leave behind,” Persch said. “I stand in solidarity with their struggle and pain.”
Despite being slight in stature, soft-spoken and as unassuming as the detention center tucked behind a production facility on a dead-end street, Persch and Murphy are dogged in their pursuit of benevolent treatment for refugees and immigrants.
“We work peacefully and respectfully, but we never take ‘no’ for an answer,” Persch said. Whether it’s the prayer vigil at Broadview, meeting with detainees at county jails or protesting the discrimination of Muslims, the duo said they aren’t stopping anytime soon.
“They are our brothers and sisters,” Murphy said, referring to refugees and immigrants. “We really believe that. They’re the ones that keep me going.”
Twitter @JavonteA
