CHICAGO — With the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts continuing to rile the Chicago area, officials in west suburban Broadview took steps on Monday to insulate residents from flare-ups between protesters and police as state lawmakers returning to Springfield this week look to strengthen legal safeguards for people swept up in “Operation Midway Blitz.”

With the Democratic-controlled legislature reconvening Tuesday for its scheduled six-day fall session, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said lawmakers will explore whether the state can restrict U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other immigration agency personnel from taking people into custody at sensitive facilities such as hospitals and courthouses, among other measures.

“If we can find a way to keep ICE from going into hospitals while people are recovering from injuries and surgeries, we want to keep them out of hospitals,” Welch said Monday. “If we can keep them out of courts and the areas around the courts, if we can do that properly, I would love to do that. ICE is disrupting and causing fear. They’re intimidating and antagonizing everywhere.”

Welch, a lead sponsor of the 2017 state law signed by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that restricts Illinois law enforcement from coordinating with federal immigration authorities, said he wants to ensure the state can enforce any measure lawmakers approve.

California, for instance, may face legal challenges for a recently passed state law prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks to conceal their faces, a practice they frequently engage in while on duty. Supporters say it is done so the agents are not identified and doxxed, but opponents say it allows them to act with impunity and without fear of being held accountable. Either way, legal experts and lawmakers have raised concerns about whether states can regulate federal officers.

“The things that we’re looking at, we want to make sure that they have teeth, that they’re substantive and that they are enforceable,” Welch said about any potential Illinois General Assembly initiatives, noting Illinois’ existing laws restricting cooperation with immigration authorities have been upheld in federal court. “We don’t want to do anything that’s symbolic. We want to do something substantive.”

The comments by Welch, a Hillside Democrat whose district includes the ICE processing facility that for weeks has been a flashpoint for protests, came as he joined Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson, other elected officials, activists and clergy members in a show of opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

During the current enforcement campaign, a Chicago alderman was briefly detained after she repeatedly asked federal agents if they had a judicial warrant for a man they sought inside a Humboldt Park hospital, while public defenders and legal advocates have asked Cook County’s chief judge to prohibit warrentless immigration arrests at or around courthouses after numerous sightings, including at the county’s Domestic Violence Courthouse.

State Rep. Norma Hernandez, a Melrose Park Democrat who heads the Illinois House Latino Caucus, said lawmakers also are “working tirelessly” to find ways to bar federal immigration agents from detaining people at places such as day care centers and schools “because our families belong in our communities, not in cages.”

“I also want to keep encouraging my colleagues and other elected officials to step in and join our calls to demand a stop to the cruelty, the dismantling of our Constitution and a call for full accountability,” Hernandez said. “Because today they’re coming for us, and tomorrow they’ll be coming for you. No family, regardless of their background, should be living in fear.”

The group led by Welch gathered in front of a fence that a federal court has ordered the Trump administration to remove by the end of Tuesday, as it was erected without village permits and blocked the industrial side street leading to the ICE facility in Broadview. The elected leaders and others voiced solidarity with Thompson, who issued an executive order earlier Monday to shut down a previously authorized protest zone on nearby 25th Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the town of roughly 8,000 residents.

Welch praised Thompson for “standing strong because her community is strong” amid the ongoing immigration enforcement effort she opposes and the daily protests it has brought to her town.

On Saturday night, one of those protests “descended into chaos,” Thompson said, prompting the mayor to move forward with the executive order restricting protests to the area right outside the low-slung brick ICE facility on Beach Street.

A total of 15 people were arrested, including one charged with aggravated battery to a police officer, in connection with a confrontation between protesters and state troopers on the road.

Thompson on Monday issued the executive order “in consultation with” state police and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office, closing the protest zone on the 2000 block of South 25th Avenue.

In a statement Monday, state police spokeswoman Melaney Arnold emphasized the small number of arrests state and local law enforcement have made compared with the large number of people who’ve shown up to protest.

“Over the past three weeks of protests, more than 2,500 people have gathered outside the ICE facility, with just 33 total arrests by all agencies in the Unified Command,” Arnold said in an emailed statement, referencing the joint effort by state police, the Cook County sheriff’s office and local police. “The majority of those arrests are of people who would not stay out of the street; obstructing traffic and putting themselves at risk of being hit by oncoming traffic. Other charges include mob action, aggravated battery to police, and criminal damage to state property.”

Speaking at the news conference with Welch and other area officials, Thompson said that while she is “outraged by the inhumane treatment of our immigrant brothers and sisters and by the unprovoked chemical attacks unleashed by (federal) agents against American citizens, journalists and ministers,” she also has a responsibility “to protect public safety and to defend” her town’s residents.

“Let me be clear: Broadview did not choose to have the ICE facility in our community, but it’s here, and so are our residents,” Thompson said. “There have been far too many protesters raising their fists instead of their voices, creating chaos at the expense of those who live here. Our residents do not have the privilege to retreat to quiet neighborhoods once the cameras are gone. They live here, they work here, and they deserve peace.”

Still, Thompson said the move to further restrict protests, which follows an order last week limiting demonstrations to the hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., does not mean officials are unable to maintain order through ordinary law enforcement means.

In federal court last week, lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the National Guard was needed to protect the ICE facility and other federal assets and personnel, an argument a judge rejected in issuing a temporary order blocking the deployment of Guard troops in the Chicago area.

“We don’t need the National Guard. We don’t,” Thompson said. “But we have a right to protect the integrity of this village.”

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