Call recordings obtained by the Weekly indicate the Chicago Police Department (CPD) was aware Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers were requesting assistance at a South Loop facility while transporting detained immigrants on June 4. HSI is a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and agents wearing HSI insignia have been observed helping detain immigrants in recent months in Chicago and around the country.
The calls for assistance prompted more than a dozen CPD units and several high-ranking officers to respond to a facility at 2245 S. Michigan that houses an ICE Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). As federal agents brought arrested people to a waiting van, a confrontation ensued between the agents and a group of demonstrators and elected officials.
The fracas has become the focus of an investigation by the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights into whether CPD violated Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, which prohibits police from assisting in immigration enforcement or sharing information with federal immigration agencies. The department has steadfastly maintained it did not.
On Wednesday, the City Council will consider an ordinance that would require CPD and the Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC) to share communications from the June 4 incident with the Council.
Via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Weekly obtained audio of two calls made that day, as well as records related to a separate notification event. In the first call, made at 2:06 p.m., the caller identified herself as a contractor working at an ICE facility, and the OEMC dispatcher asked her to repeat that for confirmation.
Listen to the ICE contractor’s call to OEMC:
“I am calling from a program that is contracted through ICE, and we are seeing people here for visits, but I have a crowd of protesters that are on private property,” the caller said. She told the dispatcher that twenty to thirty protesters were outside the facility, blocking its entrances.
“It’s a program called ISAP; we are contracted with ICE,” the caller said. The dispatcher asked if any in the crowd had weapons.
“No, no, it looks like they’re peaceful, just screaming and yelling, but they’re blocking—we can’t get in, we can’t get out. I need to be able to have all my participants coming into the [ISAP] program and not feel, not feel intimidated.”
The dispatcher said they would “send police out” to respond. However, no units immediately did, according to records the Weekly previously obtained.
The second call to OEMC came five minutes after the first. The caller said he worked in the department’s Crime Prevention Information Center (CPIC), a “fusion” center where officers monitor video feeds and other data and provide intelligence to police on the ground. In April, WBEZ reported that federal agents from ICE are assigned to CPIC full-time, while HSI and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers work in the center on a rotation.
The CPIC caller, who is identified as Captain Patrick Quinn in documents the Weekly obtained from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, said HSI agents were on scene at 2245 S. Michigan, and incorrectly claimed HSI was a separate entity from ICE. The caller was also concerned about drawing media attention to the unfolding incident.
Listen to the CPD captain’s call to OEMC:
“You don’t want to, you know, whoever’s listening on the radio—it’s not ICE, it’s Homeland Security Investigations,” Quinn said. “But I guess they’re getting surrounded. But I don’t want to put that out on—we don’t wanna make it a media thing. But they’re, you know, I don’t care what they’re doing; they’re still—if they’re getting the threats of being, you know, beat up or assaulted, we got to send units regardless of what they’re doing.”
At 2:22 p.m., a notification about the incident was made, according to a document the Weekly obtained from OEMC. In all-caps remarks at the top of the report, there’s a reminder not to broadcast the event over the air. The report repeatedly mentions HSI units were “being surrounded” and needed “assistance with crowd control attempting to transport several arrestees from building to vehicle [while] a large group is gathered outside.”
The document appears to indicate CPIC—which is located in CPD headquarters—was aware immigration enforcement was occurring at the ICE facility. According to police, that information was not conveyed to responding officers.
In response to a question from the Weekly, an OEMC spokesperson said the office “did not communicate that the initial caller was an ICE worker” to CPD.
In press statements, the police department has maintained its officers “arrived without knowledge of immigration enforcement occurring at the location.” Glen Brooks, CPD’s Director of Community Policing, reiterated that at the July 1 Immigration Committee meeting.
In response to the Weekly’s questions about the CPIC call, a CPD spokesperson provided a statement the department had already released shortly after the June 4 incident.
Jim Daley is the Weekly’s investigations editor.
