This story was reported and produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the court system. Sign up here to get their weekly newsletter.

From her room on the third floor of the Sonesta Chicago O’Hare Airport Rosemont hotel, Valentina Galvis could see flight crews and travelers coming and going. Families enjoyed summer dining on the outdoor patio. Friends snapped selfies commemorating their stays. Children fidgeted as they waited for shuttles to deliver them to the nearby airport.

But for Galvis and her seven-month-old son, the hotel was not a vacation — it was a jail. The phone had been removed from the room, and Galvis had no way to contact the outside world. Private guards contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stood watch at all times. She had no idea when she and her son Naythan, who is a U.S. citizen, would ever get to leave.

Galvis and her son were detained at the Sonesta for five days in early June after they were apprehended at the Chicago Immigration Court by federal agents.

“I was sad, confused, and often terrified,” Galvis said. “I wanted to call my husband, my attorney, or anyone at all to let them know where I was.”

In screenshots taken by family members and reviewed by Injustice Watch and The Intercept, Galvis appeared on the ICE locator to be held over 700 miles away in Washington, D.C.

Galvis’s detention at the airport hotel came as federal immigration authorities have rounded up more than 100,000 immigrants nationwide in an effort to meet arrest targets set out by the Trump administration. The spike in immigration arrests has overwhelmed detention centers around the country: Immigrants have been packed into overcrowded holding cells, forced to sleep on floors, and subjected to “unlivable” conditions at a hastily built detention camp in the Florida Everglades.

Though a hotel may seem preferable to these conditions, advocates said Galvis’s detention raises concerns about what types of facilities are being turned into de facto detention centers and how many people are quietly held in Illinois.

Xanat Sobrevilla, who works with Organized Communities Against Deportations, says it’s not the first time she’s heard of an Illinois mother of an infant baby appearing to be in Washington, D.C. — which has no detention center.

“We know we can’t trust the ICE detainee locator,” she said. “People get lost in this system.”

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., called the false location listing “chilling” and likened the secretive hotel detention to a “kidnapping.”

Illinois and Chicago have some of the nation’s strongest laws aimed at protecting immigrants like Galvis by prohibiting state and local agencies from cooperating with ICE. But her and Naythan’s detention at the Sonesta shows the limits of the state’s efforts to block ICE detention. The federal government can still use commercial facilities like hotel rooms to hold individuals and families in its custody.

“Nothing that the states or local governments can do will stop ICE from carrying out its operations,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has backed legislation that........

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