Immigrant rights advocates in Grand Rapids are sounding the alarm after reports surfaced that Immigration Customs Enforcement was attempting to detain individuals as they arrived for routine check-ins with immigration officials.
On Wednesday, June 4, dozens of volunteers with the immigrant-rights organizations Movimiento Cosecha GR and Grand Rapids Response to ICE say they witnessed immigration officials attempt to take into custody a group of immigrants at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Grand Rapids.
“We’ve felt that this was an easier way for them to apprehend immigrants because they were concentrating on one spot and then being taken in instead of what we’ve seen [in the past] is that they go look for people at their addresses,” said Gema Lowe, a volunteer with Movimiento Cosecha GR.
The ICE office where advocates say immigrants were taken into custody houses staff with the agency's Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which is designed as an alternative to detention for migrants navigating immigration proceedings. Under the program, participants are monitored — sometimes with electronic tracking — and are required to attend regular appointments.
These check-ins are intended to ensure that people comply with the conditions of their release and appear in court when scheduled.
“One of the people that was taken was planning on leaving the country later that week, but ICE called him up for an appointment and told him to bring his passport and proof that he had a plane ticket and upon arriving he was taken into custody,” Lowe added.
While ICE did not respond to questions about its role, local law enforcement was visibly involved in the latest incident. Officers with the Grand Rapids Police Department arrived to address what the department said was a trespassing complaint against the activists.
“Officers informed the group they were free to exercise their First Amendment rights on the sidewalk (public property) but could not be on private property, nor impede the business of the several businesses/offices at that location,” an official with GRPD said in a statement. “There were no arrests.”
In 2019, the police department implemented a policy prohibiting officers from questioning or detaining individuals solely based on their immigration status. While the department maintains that its actions on June 4 did not constitute collaboration with ICE, Lowe disagrees.
“This is a new level of not even following their own rules because the agents are not identifying themselves,” Lowe said. “They are just grabbing people after their appointments.”
Arrests at ICE check-ins, appointments with the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, and immigration court hearings aren’t new — but until now, they’ve been rare and typically involved people with a criminal record, a violated removal order, or broken alternative-to-detention restrictions. That’s according to Christine Sauve, manager of policy and communication for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
“We did not see it as much under Biden's first 2.5 years, in part due to the pandemic and preference not to detain during that time, but towards the end it had happened some,” Sauve explained. “What we are seeing now is certainly an increase and not tied to criminality or violations but tied to the administration's new goal of 3,000 daily arrests," she said, referring to a target set by Trump administration officials last month.
It’s unclear whether immigration enforcement officers will continue making arrests at routine check-in appointments in Grand Rapids. But one thing is certain: immigrants facing these appointments are forced to make a difficult choice — show up and risk detention, or stay away and risk breaking the law.
