It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon when I arrived at the innocuous ICE detention facility in Plain Jane, Broadview, Illinois. The protesters, about 100 yards away from the facility, were friendly, well-behaved, even to the Charlie Kirk wannabes there to film the action. The gathering was serenaded by a transsexual man who never once stopped talking, no doubt the effect of steroids on his young body. But he was friendly. As is typically the case in this center of Midwest activism, Chicago.

Then Friday came. The restrictions on the protesters were lifted by court decree, and after the removal of a fence around the facility on Beach Street, protesters attempted to get much closer to the facility and to the scene of ICE delivering illegal immigrants for processing. About eleven were arrested. My view catches the calm before the storm.

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