A Broadview company that has found itself in the middle of an ongoing standoff between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and protesters erected wooden barricades Monday in hopes of keeping protesters — and the clashes that come with them — off its property.
Reveal Interiors, an independently owned cabinet manufacturer located at 1920 Beach St., directly north of the ICE facility, has been at its location for 12 years, according to employees who did not want to be identified. The ICE facility next door, at 1930 Beach St., has been at its location for about 19 years.
Until recently, there were no conflicts, Reveal Interiors employees said Monday. But since the Trump administration announced stepped-up operations in the Chicago area targeting immigrants, tensions have flared.
“It’s been hell. We’ve had tear gas come into our plant. Our workers have been hit by pepper balls,” one employee said. He added that workers have collected nonlethal munitions that landed in Reveal Interiors’ parking lot.
The Reveal employee said that as some protesters have crossed onto Reveal’s property, ICE responds by deploying pepper balls or tear gas, placing the company and its employees in the line of fire.
Workers at Reveal say a fence that ICE erected in the early hours of Sept. 23 across Beach Street has had both positive and negative effects for the business.
“It lessened the amount of confrontations directly in front of the ICE facility but pushed it directly in front of our business,” the employee said. He added that most of the confrontations that have occurred since ICE put up its fencing have happened on nearby Harvard Street — which put employees of another business in danger.
Last week, Broadview officials ordered the removal of the “illegal” fence outside of the federal compound used to process detained immigrants.
The Broadview Fire Department said village officials reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “to demand the fence be removed immediately” because it was installed without a permit in the roadway outside the Beach Street facility.
“In case of fire or other emergencies, at businesses located on that street, Broadview fire apparatus would be unable to use the road to access these businesses,” the fire department said in a statement.
Westmont Engineering, at 2000 Beach St., is south of the fence that ICE erected across Beach Street. Because of that, Westmont employees must come and go via Harvard Street, the same route that the ICE vehicles take to access nearby main artery 25th Avenue. The Reveal employee said Westmont employee cars are often mistaken for ICE vehicles and are the target of taunts by protesters.
Westmont employees “had to be escorted out by police on Friday,” the Reveal employee said.
Westmont Engineering and the Broadview Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
