Michigan has 2nd highest rate of ICE arrests of immigrants

Michigan has the second highest rate of arrests of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, drawing concern from advocates who say the enforcement operations are splitting up families and causing anxiety in immigrant communities. 

ICE arrested 1,498 immigrants in Michigan over a 20-month period from the start of fiscal year 2017 through May 2018, according to statistics compiled and recently released by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

With an estimated 129,000 undocumented immigrants living in Michigan, that's a rate of 11.6 arrests per 1,000 undocumented immigrants — the second highest rate in the U.S. among all states with at least 100,000 undocumented immigrants. 

Pennsylvania had the highest rate, 25.6, followed by Michigan at 11.6 and Ohio at 11.4. Michigan and Ohio are both overseen by the Detroit office of ICE, which has faced criticism from immigrant advocates for what they say is overzealous enforcement. 

Michigan's rate of ICE arrests is about twice as high as the national rate across the U.S., which is 6 per 1,000 undocumented immigrants. 

"You have families ripped apart," said Diego Bonesatti, an immigrant advocate who is Director of Legal Services at Michigan United. "There's a lot of uncertainty in immigrant communities, a feeling of nowhere to turn. The families are under a great deal of stress."

The data from Syracuse University on ICE arrests looked at what are called "community arrests," defined as when "ICE arrests individuals it believes are deportable after it finds or encounters them out in the community," said the report. These arrests are separate from what are called "custodial arrests," when ICE receives immigrants who were previously arrested or detained by other law enforcement, such as local police pulling over a driver and placing him in jail. 

The high rate of community arrests indicates that ICE is being aggressive in going after immigrants and not just relying on local law enforcement, said advocates. 

The community "arrests take place at many locations — at individuals' homes, workplaces, when arriving at an appointment at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) or ICE or a court, traveling, or elsewhere," said the Syracuse University's TRAC report. 

Ruby Robinson, co-managing attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said the report's data "is not surprising" given what he has seen over the past two years. 

"That sounds consistent with our experiences and the numbers we're seeing in terms of noncitizens being arrested and put in immigration proceedings," Robinson said. "People are very nervous."

The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center is in touch with about 15 to 20 immigrants a week who are detained or calling for help with their immigration status and "a lot of those have no prior criminal history," Robinson said.

Immigration report comes at uncertain time 

The new report from Syracuse University comes at a time of renewed attention to the immigration issue with President Donald Trump tweeting on June 17: "Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States."  Reports in the Miami Herald and CNN listed 10 cities to be targeted by ICE, but Detroit was not one of them.

The tweet caused panic and confusion in some immigrant communities and among advocates who were unsure what was going to happen. Trump then tweeted on Saturday that "I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks" until "Democrats and Republicans ... work out a solution. ... If not, Deportations start!" 

Trump's tweets ignore the reality that removals and deportations happen on a regular basis, advocates say. 

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the Detroit office of ICE, which oversees Michigan and Ohio, declined comment on the Syracuse TRAC report, but said that in "fiscal year 2018, the Detroit field office made more than 3,600 arrests — approximately 75 percent of those individuals either had a prior criminal conviction or came into ICE custody pursuant to their criminal arrest on pending charges."

The 3,600 arrests by the Detroit field office includes both community arrests and custodial arrests, which involve ICE receiving those who may have been arrested first by local law enforcement. 

Walls said "these stats make clear that the agency only conducts targeted enforcement focused first on criminals and public safety threats. Claims of any type of random or indiscriminate enforcement are false."

Over the past two years, the Detroit office of ICE has conducted operations that have netted a significant number of arrests: 

• In March 2017, ICE arrested about 50 people on immigration violations in a raid at a building in southwest Detroit.
• Starting in June 2017, ICE arrested a number of Iraqi immigrants who had criminal records after it reached a deal with the Iraqi government. In fiscal year 2017, ICE arrested 173 Iraqis in Michigan. 
• In January 2018, ICE targeted four 7-Eleven stores in Michigan, part of an operation that raided 98 7-Eleven stores nationally resulting in 21 arrests. 
• In June 2018, ICE arrested more than 100 immigrant workers at an Ohio gardening and landscaping company.

The deportation target has widened  

The number of immigrants without criminal records arrested or deported by federal agents in Michigan and Ohio has soared as the Trump administration toughened immigration enforcement.

Under Trump, ICE is now sweeping up anyone who may be undocumented, not just those who have criminal records, while the administration of former President Barack Obama prioritized the deportation of undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

For example, if ICE finds another family member or neighbor who is undocumented while they are targeting a specific person, that family member will also now be arrested. 

That happened on Feb. 20 in Grand Rapids, when ICE agents arrested Marilu Parra-Velazquez, 41, the mother of Brandon Reyes, 22. ICE had initially targeted Reyes because of a previous drunken-driving conviction. He had previously been a DACA recipient since he was brought over illegally to the U.S. as a child, but his conviction invalidated his status. 

While ICE was arresting him, they found out his mom was undocumented and took her into custody. She was later released on bond by a judge.

In the past, those types of immigrants, "even if undocumented, they would let those people" go unless they had a criminal history, said Bonesatti of Michigan United. "Now, under the Trump administration, they grab everybody."

This month, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance released a statement criticizing the head of the Detroit office of ICE, Rebecca Adducci, for what they said are overly aggressive actions against immigrant communities. 

Lynn Tramonte, Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, said ICE is even going after "long-term immigrants" who have lived in the U.S. for decades. She said that family separations are happening not only at the southern border, but also in Midwestern states.

"We are deeply distressed from seeing children torn from their parents at the border, but I meet people in Michigan and Ohio it's happening to," Tramonte said. "It's happening in our neighborhoods, it's happening every day, it's happening to people who have lived here for decades."

The statistics in the report from Syracuse University shows a significant difference in how ICE operates in the U.S. depending on the region. "A person's odds of being arrested and deported vary greatly depending upon where he or she lives," the report said. 

In addition to analyzing the number of community arrests, the Syracuse University report also looked at the number of deportations of immigrants under ICE's Secure Communities program. The program includes custodial arrests of "individuals whom another law enforcement agency has taken into custody for other reasons ... a transfer of custody from one law enforcement agency to another."

From the start of fiscal year 2017 to May 2018, there were 705 deportations in Michigan under ICE's Secure Communities program, a rate of 5.5 per 1,000, which ranks Michigan 12th out of 21 states with at least 100,000 undocumented immigrants. 

ICE has complained that cities that adopt so-called "sanctuary" policies make it more difficult for them to deport under its Secure Communities program and so have to rely more on community arrests. The Syracuse University report notes that ICE has said "the agency must rely on stepped-up community arrests to compensate for having fewer custodial transfers in sanctuary jurisdictions."

But the report added that their data shows there is no correlation between the rate of community arrests and whether an area is considered a sanctuary area. 

"A person's odds of being arrested by ICE in a 'community arrest' are not necessarily higher if they reside in a sanctuary versus non-sanctuary jurisdiction," said the report.

Detroit is not considered a sanctuary city in the way that San Francisco is, but some counties in Michigan, such as Wayne and Kent, do have policies against agreeing to ICE detainer requests to hold immigrants in jail for ICE beyond their release date.

Advocates say that ICE is even going after U.S. citizens in its arrests, pointing to the case of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a citizen and Marine veteran picked up by ICE last year after a disturbance at a hospital in Grand Rapids led to local police arresting him.

After his detention, the Kent County Sheriff said it will no longer honor detainer requests by ICE. ICE in March then criticized Kent County for what it called the county's new "sanctuary" policy. 

Bonesatti said the increased number of arrests by ICE when it works with local law enforcement "is a big boost" for the federal agency, "but there's a lot of prices that are paid by local communities."

There is "diminished trust by the local community with police, and also the fact that they are taken away from crimes, from going after assault, robbery."

Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com, 313-223-4792, Twitter @nwarikoo