‘This is bush league stuff’: Hoffman Estates mayor seeks return to civility after chaotic ending to board meeting
A particularly tumultuous public comment period at the end of Monday’s Hoffman Estates village board meeting could lead to stronger protocols at future meetings, Mayor Bill McLeod said.
“I think we have to crack down on this profanity and interrupting people,” he added. “This is bush league stuff. If you want to make an argument, make an argument. Don’t act like a 2-year-old kid.”
What began as a protest and appeal to Hoffman Estates officials to take a more proactive stance against any U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in the village spun into chaos after one speaker was ejected from Monday’s village board meeting by not giving up the microphone during public comment.
Hoffman Estates resident Beenish Tanvir had spoken about chronicling ICE activity in the village at a demonstration before the meeting. During the public comment, she segued into criticisms of U.S. involvement with Israel, data centers and other issues and refused to relinquish the microphone after the allotted three minutes.
Once removed from the building, she stood outside the meeting room window holding up a sign reading “Welcome to the United States of Israel” and tapping on the glass with her cellphone.
Tanvir called the board “inconsiderate, clueless, apathetic garbage” for not taking a public stance on her issues of concern.
Protesters also talked back and coughed loudly while Hoffman Estates resident Robert Steinberg spoke in opposition to their comments.
The meeting was adjourned after the final scheduled speaker, Samantha Valdez of Elgin, also wouldn’t stop when her time was called.
“We put up with this stuff for a long time,” McLeod said of the regularity of such public comment sessions. “Enough is enough. It’s not supposed to be a riot. That’s not free speech, interrupting people and screaming at them.”
Among Tanvir’s earlier, specifically ICE-related comments, was her account that she had observed ICE agents staging in the Hoffman Estates Police Department parking lot on April 10 shortly before they surrounded and took someone from Salem Plaza in nearby Schaumburg. She added federal agents were again observed April 19 before someone was taken from Hanover Park.
Hoffman Estates Police Chief Kasia Cawley has acknowledged immigration agents used the parking lot in the past and couldn’t be prevented from doing so, but said no incidents as recent as April were ever brought to her attention.
Tanvir also complained that a Hoffman Estates police officer is a Department of Homeland Security agent working with ICE.
But in a statement Monday, village officials said that wasn’t true, contending every officer complies with the Illinois TRUST Act prohibiting complicity with immigration agents.
The statement from the village acknowledged an officer works with the Homeland Security Investigations Air Unit, which is a similar assignment officers in other jurisdictions have to assist with a variety of federal investigations.
The officer provides aerial support for Homeland Security’s financial investigation group and is a K9 handler for drug detection. None of his work relates to ICE, according to the statement.
A key request by protesters is that Hoffman Estates put up signs warning ICE away from operating in the village, which they contend has been an effective measure in such suburbs as Elgin and West Chicago.
They believe these actions show support for all the village’s residents.
But Cawley said the village has resisted such signs as they only provide a false sense of security. A municipal police department can’t enforce a prohibition against the activities of federal agents, she added.