About 200 demonstrators staged a sit-in, blocking apparent ICE agents from coming in and out of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s Broadview processing center on Friday.

Demonstrators referred to the facility as an illegal “de facto detention center.”

“The reason [ICE is] in Broadview is because they know Chicago doesn’t want ICE in our city,” said Rachel Cohen, one of the organizers of the demonstration.

No injuries or arrests were reported during the largely peaceful protest.

Demonstrators, who showed up about 6:30 a.m., remained outside the facility until around 11:30 a.m. They vowed to return every Friday, when transports usually occur.

“We’ll be back,” demonstrators shouted in unison.

The protest comes at a time when the city is preparing for anticipated increased operations by ICE. On Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker said he expects ICE agents to be “assembled, ready to go on Friday, and that they will begin actions on Saturday or over the weekend.”

About 11:20 a.m., as agents sporting police vests walked outside of the building, demonstrators yelled at them, calling them “police impersonators.”

“Save your soul, quit your job,” one protester yelled.

“Shame on you,” another one shouted.

Cohen, 31, said she and as many as 200 other protesters got there at 6:30 a.m., ahead of the agents’ usual transportation of people held in custody at 7 a.m. On this particular Friday, the time of transportation was shifted to closer to 5 a.m. in anticipation of the demonstration, Cohen added.

Groups of protesters surrounded an unmarked van as it tried to enter the parking lot, but the van turned around as protesters blocked the entry.

“When we saw how scared they got,” Cohen said of the van turning away, “It was important for us to stay.”

Demonstrator A’Keisha Lee, 29, said she felt energized by the community that showed up on Friday. Earlier, tents were put up by demonstrators, but officers forced them to take them down, according to a video of the encounter reviewed by the Sun-Times.

Lee said the protesters chanted and sang “We Shall Not Be Moved,” throughout the protest, and wanted to show that they can stand up for people in their community.

The song, based on the religious hymn “I Shall Not Be Moved,” has historically been sung at labor and civil rights protests.

“I think that Broadview is just looking for an opportunity to say they don’t want this in their community,” Lee said. “People feel like it’s helpless, that they have no voice. But it feels good that people came out here.”

For Rev. Beth Johnson, who also demonstrated Friday, the recent threats from the Trump administration have felt like a “reign of terror.”

“This is a moral issue,” Johnson said. “We absolutely cannot abide and continue to not act in the face of the violence that’s being perpetrated upon our communities.”

In July, Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda described her experience at the Broadview facility, calling the conditions “inhumane.” She was one of at least 10 immigrants arrested by federal immigration agents on June 4, when she and others showed up for their immigration appointments in the South Loop.