Protests around an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility outside Chicago, which immigrant advocates have denounced as being used as a detention center, descended into chaos on Friday, resulting in 21 arrests and four injured officers.

This is the latest clash between protesters and authorities in a center that has become the epicenter of demonstrations against the Trump administration's continued crackdown on immigration in the Chicago area of ??Illinois.

Videos captured hundreds of people, including religious leaders and riot police, pinning protesters to the ground and arresting them.

Jillian Westerfield, associate minister of Lake Street Church in Evanston, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she saw a group of religious leaders holding hands in the streets and joined the demonstration.

She said she attended the day's protests to provide spiritual support to those detained inside the detention center.

Westerfield also said she wanted to greet some of the hundreds of people who have been ordered released from federal detention centers in the region after a federal judge ruled that agents violated a 2022 out-of-court settlement regarding warrantless arrests in and around Chicago.

Religious leaders have repeatedly formally requested access to the facility to offer religious services, but have been denied.

An ICE detention center official again denied religious leaders access by phone Friday morning.

“We have to provide spiritual care because our neighbors are being denied their right to religious freedom and the little comfort we could offer them through communion or other forms of support,” Westerfield said in her interview.