Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) was detained after refusing to leave a meeting in the Chicago office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Gutierrez insisted he would not leave until ICE met his demands.
The arrest came after the Representative led a sit-in including illegal aliens who were demanding information on specific cases of deportation.
“They were asking about specific cases and about the general conduct of ICE and deportations,” Gutierrez spokesman Douglas Rivlin said. “The congressman has decided that he did not get the answers he was looking for from the ICE regional director and he’s going to be staying inside until he gets answers, even if that means risking arrest.”
Once Gutierrez decided he didn’t get the answers he was looking for, he and seven others announced that they would not leave the premises. At around 1:30 PM officials handcuffed Gutierrez and led him out of the building, Chicago’s NBC affiliate reported.
One of the cases Gutierrez was asking about was the pending deportation of Army veteran Miguel Perez Jr.
A spokesman for ICE said that the Chicago office complied to the best of their ability with everything that the Congressman asked for, but eventually he demanded things that the local office could not achieve. It was then that Gutierrez upped his ante and refused to leave the office.
The ICE official said:
Federal Protective Service officers were called by ERO to the scene because the individuals would not leave the ERO office. FPS provided three separate verbal warnings and after each warning FPS provided the individuals several minutes to comply. When the group refused to leave, they were briefly placed in flexible plastic restraints before ICE officials relayed that they no longer wanted the individuals removed from the building. The Congressman and other individuals were placed in the restraints for approximately two minutes before the flex cuffs were removed by FPS. FPS did not cite these individuals.
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