Broadview police chief accuses ICE agents of making false 911 calls
Broadview village officials sent a strong message to the feds this week. They do not want U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operating its detention center in their town.
On Thursday, Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills said ICE agents are draining the resources of his department and the community by making false 911 calls.
Body camera video footage obtained by the CBS News Chicago Investigators shows several Broadview officers responding to a 911 call claiming someone was tampering with a gate at the ICE detention facility.
The gate in question is where ICE takes detained immigrants for processing, but when police arrived, all they found was two people and a camera. A CBS News Chicago photographer was filming the exterior of the building, with a CBS security guard by his side.
The 911 call from an ICE agent claimed someone was tampering with the gate.
According to an incident report, an ICE agent called police for help. Mills believes it was a bogus call.
An ICE agent claimed someone was trying to force their way into a door, but it was just a CBS News Chicago photographer filming the exterior of the building.
"It's disturbing. It's ridiculous," Mills said.
The chief said that was just one of several questionable 911 calls his police department has received from the ICE facility recently.
Officers at the scene of that incident also questioned the validity of the 911 call claiming someone was tampering with a fence.
"It sure doesn't look like anyone's forcing anything in any fence over here," one Broadview police officer said.
The same detention center has become the site of at least three other incidents involving federal agents, who are accused of hitting people with cars, shooting projectiles, and using chemical agents on journalists, including firing a pepper ball at CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei's vehicle on Sunday.
Rezaei said there was no active protest or protesters at the facility, and she was alone with no one around her at the time of the incident.
Rezaei told Broadview police she was driving her truck with her driver's side window down, while approaching the 25th Avenue entrance to the ICE facility to see if anything was going on, before leaving the area.
That's when she said a masked ICE agent shot a pepper ball from inside the fence, hitting the side of her truck, causing the chemical agents to engulf the inside of the vehicle.
Rezaei said the pepper ball left white powder on her windshield, and her face had "been on fire for at least the last 10 minutes or so." The chemical also caused her to vomit once outside of her truck, she said.
Mills said what happened to Rezaei is "horrific."
He has demanded ICE turn over the names of all federal officers involved in each incident, and said he is ready to take ICE to court. His department has opened three criminal investigations into various incidents involving ICE agents.
"We're going to look at maybe reaching out to Cook County State's Attorney for subpoenas."
The chief also said he is now reviewing all 911 calls made from the facility.
"It's actually a violation of law. It would be classified under disorderly conduct, filing a false official report," he said.
Mills said the Department of Homeland Security has told him they will cooperate with his criminal investigations into federal agents, but he said they would not say to what extent.
ICE officials and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the 911 calls.
