Civil and immigrant rights groups have a message for Michigan’s local law enforcement agencies: you don’t have to participate in President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
The ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center sent memos to the state’s police and county sheriff’s offices last week. They stress the costs of cooperation with federal immigration priorities, including potential liability and high costs to taxpayers when mistakes are made.
“The federal government can't force local law enforcement to participate in the creation of an immigration dragnet,” according to ACLU attorney Miriam Aukerman.
If local law enforcement does participate, there's a risk of legal consequences, Aukerman said. "When local police get entangled in in immigration enforcement that exposes local governments to significant legal liability at potentially massive cost to taxpayers. We want local governments and local police to understand the huge risks they face when they attempt to do the work of federal immigration officers.”
And making local law enforcement collaborate with immigration agents makes noncitizens less likely to cooperate with investigators, according to Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit.
“They are not showing up to court. They're not serving as witnesses. And in some cases, that means that the case has to be dismissed because we don't have the necessary testimony,” Savit said.
Seven Michigan counties and local police agencies have signed what are known as 287(g) agreements with the federal government to act as immigration enforcement, said the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center’s Christine Sauvé. However, she added that informal cooperation between those entities is what drives most immigration arrests and detentions.
“We are seeing an increase in inappropriate actions from local law enforcement jurisdictions without 287(g) agreements,” Sauvé said. “Many of our clients who end up in detention tell us about benign interactions with local police or sheriff's that surprisingly and unnecessarily escalate to involving federal immigration agents.
“Over the last decade, three-quarters of ICE arrests in the interior of the U.S. have been due to handoffs with local law enforcement. It's really states and localities that power the mass detention and mass deportation efforts.”
