Protesters clash with police outside Chicago as court allows National Guard troops to stay

As the court battle continues over whether President Trump can legally deploy the National Guard to Illinois, a fight broke out Saturday night between protesters and state police at an immigration detention center near Chicago.

The protest, which was largely a peaceful gathering of a few hundred people at the Broadview facility, quickly turned chaotic when demonstrators broke through a line of concrete barriers, stopping traffic and violating police orders to stay off the street.

By 8 p.m., 15 people had been arrested, according to Matthew Waldberg, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and the Unified Protest Command, which includes local and state police. Eight of the arrests took place during the evening’s chaos, while seven took place earlier in the day.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center has been a hot spot for weeks as protesters express their anger and frustration over Trump’s immigration crackdown with chants, signs and fist shakes. Over the past two weeks, law enforcement has repeatedly responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Last week, police hit a pastor in the head with a rubber pepper bullet.

Tensions rose last week when Trump announced plans to deploy federalized National Guard troops from Illinois and Texas to protect ICE and its facilities.

On Saturday, an appeals court stayed a lower court’s ruling that halted all National Guard deployments in Illinois for two weeks. The new ruling says the troops — 300 from Illinois and 200 from Texas — can remain under federal control but cannot be deployed.

White House officials cited “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness,” which they claimed local law enforcement was unable to quell, to justify the troop deployment. Twenty California soldiers were also sent to Illinois to provide “refresher training.”

Saturday night at the ICE facility in Broadview, police pulled out wooden batons and pushed the crowd into the street, threatening to deploy tear gas if people didn’t disperse and go home. Protesters largely retreated, but some threw objects at the police line, leading to skirmishes.

A woman was knocked to the ground by police, her head hitting the cement sidewalk. A man dressed in black and wearing a gas mask was tackled and pushed to the ground by police before being handcuffed and taken away.

The Chicago-area conflicts come as Trump has stepped up immigration enforcement and deployed federal troops to several Democratic-led cities, starting with Los Angeles this summer. The National Guard was patrolling alongside local police in Memphis, Tennessee, last week, while in Portland, troop deployments are suspended after the state of Oregon challenged the decision. The administration says the city has become lawless, while Oregon officials say Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify calling in the National Guard.

In the Chicago area, more than 1,000 people have been arrested by federal immigration agents since the Trump administration intensified its “Midway Blitz” to deport immigrants last month. A Chicago television news producer was pushed to the ground and arrested during an ICE raid on Friday. Two women were arrested by ICE agents outside an elementary school. In previous weeks, a Blackhawk helicopter operated by ICE flew over a Southside apartment building in an operation that saw dozens of people, including children and elderly people, tied up and temporarily detained. Thirty-seven people were arrested.

The mayor of Broadview issued a citywide order banning protests before 9 a.m. and after 6 p.m., which was enforced.

“It’s been intense and hectic,” said Dominique Dandridge, who lives across the street from the detention center and has watched the vans arrive and leave at all hours of the night.

Between conflicts with law enforcement, there has been plenty of downtime as social media influencers look to make their mark. Selfie sticks were as prevalent at the Broadview protests as gas masks, balaclavas, safety glasses and flags.

Don Lemon, a former CNN reporter and now YouTuber, walked through the small crowd Friday and Saturday, closely followed by a videographer, two crew members and a security guard.

Then there was Cam Higby, a conservative social media influencer from Seattle, who tours college campuses, where he invites students to debate with him. His presence angered some protesters, who chanted “Temu Charlie Kirk,” suggesting he was a cheap version of the conservative influencer fatally shot in September while speaking on a Utah college campus.

Also in attendance was Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old conservative influencer. On Friday, he was escorted to ICE headquarters by armed agents. Protesters jeered at him as he walked by, following him with their phone cameras as he pointed his own camera at them.

He told a reporter he went to the facility to train — he was going to livestream an ICE raid this weekend.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.