The Illinois House passed a bill Wednesday restricting future immigration detention centers from being built near community buildings.

The bill would bar the placement of immigration detention centers within 1,500 feet of schools, churches, day care centers, cemeteries, public parks, forest preserves, private residences and public housing. Existing detention facilities like the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview would not be affected by the legislation.

After passing out of the House along partisan lines with support from Democrats and opposition from Republicans, the bill now goes toe the Illinois Senate.

House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, who sponsored the bill and represents areas in and around Broadview, said the legislation is the product of what residents in that community endured during Operation Midway Blitz.

“What should be a place of peace and routine for that community has too often become a place of fear, disruption, trauma and instability,” Welch said during the bill’s debate. “This bill is not about politics, It’s about people.”

“It’s about the little kid at daycare who should not grow up around chaos. It’s about the family in their home who should not feel like they are living next to a crisis zone. It is about the church member walking into worship who should be met with peace, not tension. It is about saying that in Illinois, we will not place detention facilities in the heart of our neighborhoods and pretend there are no consequences.”

Republican House Floor Leader Patrick Windhorst, a lawmaker from Metropolis, raised concerns over the legislation’s legality and compared it to a California law, struck down in a federal court, that would have phased out private, for-profit prisons and detention centers.

Welch argued his bill would not meet the same fate, saying the California law was a ban, while this is only a restriction.

“We are continually picking fights with the federal government,” Windhorst said. “The result of this effort to not work together with the federal government to resolve the issues, particularly related to immigration and enforcement of our laws, has resulted in huge problems in our state.”

Welch responded, “We’re not picking a fight with the federal government, the federal government is picking a fight with us. We have states’ rights, we know our rights, we know our power.”