Faith leaders denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for rejecting access to give Communion to immigrants being held at an Illinois facility over the weekend.
The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership (CSPL), a Catholic and Christian-rooted nonprofit, organized a Mass by the immigration processing center on All Saints Day and Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead.
Organizers estimate some 2,000 people attended on Saturday, as many prayed, sang and held signs protesting ICE.
“Operation Midway Blitz has caused chaos and mayhem in our city,” Michael Okińczyc-Cruz, the executive director of CSPL, told ABC News, referring to the immigration crackdown in Chicago.
“It’s creating such fear and trauma for so many of the families that we work with and that are members of our coalition,” he said.
A crowd of parishioners, religious sisters, and activists gathers in peaceful assembly during a Eucharistic procession to the Broadview ICE center ,advocating for religious access for detained migrants, in Illinois, United States on November 1, 2025. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Anadolu via Getty Images
Okińczyc-Cruz said that CSPL formally submitted a letter requesting access more than a week in advance and took numerous steps for ministers to give Communion to migrants in the Broadview facility. This is the second time they were denied entry since their first attempt on Oct. 11, he told ABC News.
“These days are so symbolically important for us in the Catholic Church to honor the saints who’ve come before us,” Okińczyc-Cruz said.
Katrina Thompson, the mayor of Broadview, also submitted a letter on their behalf to DHS and ICE requesting permission on Oct. 22. It went unanswered, according to Okińczyc-Cruz.
ABC News reached out but did not immediately hear back from DHS.
Sister JoAnn Persch is the president of Catherine’s Caring Cause, an organization that supports asylum seekers with housing, legal and medical needs. She and Chicago Auxiliary Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado led the delegation on Saturday.
For nearly two decades, Persch and the late Sister Pat Murphy prayed for immigrants outside of the center, she said. A starkly different scene on Saturday emerged: leaders were not permitted to walk all the way down to the building, she told ABC News.
“We never saw an ICE officer — except when they kept riding up and down the street during the Mass,” Persch said.
A crowd of parishioners, religious sisters, and activists gathers in peaceful assembly during a Eucharistic procession to the Broadview ICE center ,advocating for religious access for detained migrants, in Illinois, United States on November 1, 2025.
Anadolu via Getty Images
Some members interpreted this to be an intimidation tactic, according to Okińczyc-Cruz.
Okińczyc-Cruz recounted federal agents drove by “close to a dozen times.”
After speaking with the Illinois State Police, an officer called a supervisor of the Broadview Center, who said they could not come in due to safety reasons, Persch told ABC News.
“My thought after was, ‘whose safety?’ I had been in that building for 10 years, never any serious threat to me,” she said.
Also alarming to Persch is immigrants’ religious rights being violated, she said.
“What is most disconcerting is the fact that those men and women inside there deserve pastoral care, deserve to be nourished by Communion,” she said.
Dan Greenstone was among those in attendance. “My conscience has been shocked by what I’ve heard from neighbors and friends in the Chicago area,” he told ABC News.
He said immigration policies are “being enforced extremely cruelly, recklessly and violently” and expressed concerns over clergy being denied access to the facility.
Greenstone said he is not Catholic but felt moved by the Mass, calling it “a beautiful ceremony.”
He described seeing people dressed in Day of the Dead outfits, flowers and music as a “contrast of that shared humanity with the razor wire and the tactical vehicles and the guns.”
Okińczyc-Cruz told ABC News the nonprofit plans to again ask for a meeting and submit another request to offer communion to people inside the Broadview facility. He stressed that without that opportunity, officials are “infringing upon people’s religious freedom and religious liberty.”
“It’s like the parable of the persistent widow. We have to keep going back, and back, and back, persistently, non-violently, but we are not gonna give up,” he said.
