Organizing in Washtenaw to support immigrants targeted by ICE
By Clare Kinberg
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently detaining one or two people a day in Washtenaw County, according to several activists in the immigrants’ rights network. Some, like reports of four parents of Ypsilanti Community Schools students detained in January, receive wide news coverage. Most ICE activity in Washtenaw County is not reported to the public.
Washtenaw has several organizations and networks in place to monitor ICE activity and to aid targeted individuals and families. One of these, the newly formed Interfaith Fund for Immigrant Justice (IFIJ) kicked off their fundraising efforts on February 11. Their goal is to raise $100,000 for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC).
The IFIJ kickoff filled the Genesis Social Hall drawing the participation of over 140 people from 23 congregations, including Beth Israel, Temple Beth Emeth, the Jewish Cultural Society, Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation, and the Ann Arbor Orthodox Minyan. The first speaker, Silvia Nolasco-Rivers, spoke about what the immigrant community is experiencing now. She herself came from El Salvador as a child with her family. They lived in Sanctuary at the Friends Meeting churches in Portland, Oregon, and Ann Arbor.
Nolasco-Rivers spoke passionately about the effects of the local ICE actions that she is seeing as she visits families with her daughter Esperanza and distributes aid. She gave a poignant example of a local couple, where the man kissed his wife on the forehead before leaving the house for work and said, “We’ll make chicharrones when I get home.” She never saw him again.
She talked about breadwinners being taken, leaving the wife and children without support. She asked the gathered to imagine kissing their wives or husbands or children goodbye and having them suddenly gone at the end of the day. She said that while the money we are raising is important, it is essential to also give immigrants moral support, to let them know they are seen, to get to know them personally. With a largely white, middle-class group of people gathered to see “what we can do,” she said that it was really about love. It was a very powerful message. After she spoke, the room was silent, with a palpable energy. Organizer Steve Merritt said, “It felt like we really knew then why we were there.”
Although Michigan has not had widely reported conflicts in response to ICE activity, the state is home to one of the largest ICE detention facilities, the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin. Many Washtenaw detainees are taken to Baldwin, which reopened as a detention center in June 2025. Baldwin, located in Lake County, is about a three-hour drive from Ann Arbor. Detainees at Baldwin are often held without due process, without access to lawyers, without communications with loved ones, and in reported crude and cruel conditions. As of early January, the facility in Baldwin housed a daily average of 1,391 detainees. Ann Arbor activists have made a concerted effort to support detainees through visitations, support for legal fees, and donations for commissary accounts. Local supporters have also helped to organize an ongoing “Washtenaw Witness at Baldwin” presence since this past Fall.
Every detention creates ripples of trauma across the community — not just for those most directly vulnerable, but also for their friends and colleagues and peers. Families and neighbors are traumatized, and the lack of transparency by ICE generates rumors that widen the fear. Allies and advocates are affected too.
In one case, reported Richard Stahler-Sholk, a young man was injured by ICE during his detention and taken to Trinity/St. Joseph Hospital, and a community observer was issued a trespass ban for acting as an observer. In another situation, a Latino advocate who was accompanying someone to a court appointment was seized by ICE, pushed to the ground, handcuffed and verbally abused, even though he explained that he was a U.S. citizen and was carrying identification to prove it.
According to school, public health, community agency staff, and members of the impacted communities, immigrants across Washtenaw are living in fear. Many are afraid of taking children to school or childcare, riding the bus, going to work, going to medical appointments, or showing up for court appointments even for traffic tickets.
In response, Washtenaw since 2017 has a revival of the “sanctuary movement,” a network created in the 1980s to house and protect refugees fleeing violence in their home countries.
The new sanctuary movement of individuals and religious congregations is supporting immigrants in a multitude of ways. Congregations are posting signs excluding ICE from private spaces of their facilities, since Trump rescinded the “sensitive locations” limitation on ICE enforcement. Others are helping to raise funds for direct assistance to families and, especially, for legal support.
Activist groups are organizing “Know Your Rights” trainings for businesses as well as community members, as well as distributing whistles and setting up hotlines to mobilize observers when ICE sightings are reported. Since the murders of Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, numerous hyper-local neighborhood watch groups have spread to monitor ICE activity. These groups are organizing themselves at the block level, at the neighborhood level, at the Ward level, at the school-district level, and/or in other geographically specific areas.
There has been a proliferation of vigils, rallies, protests, and walkouts: some by students at U-M, Pioneer High School, and Community High; some by groups like Indivisible; and others by other faith-based coalitions.
The City of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County have passed resolutions aimed at stopping abusive practices of Federal immigration enforcement in municipally owned facilities, buildings, parking areas, and programs. On Monday, February 2, more than 100 community members gathered in Larcom City Hall in Ann Arbor to reaffirm and expand the city’s policy of non-cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The policy prohibits city officials and local police from assisting federal immigration enforcement officials in operations not backed up by a judicial warrant and initiates the drafting of an ordinance requiring all law enforcement to clearly display identification, restricts the use of city buildings or parking lots for immigration enforcement, and reinforces the prohibition of surveillance of a person or group based on their immigration status or race.
Councilmember Cynthia Harrison, D-Ward 1, encouraged the council to preemptively enact legal protections for undocumented residents in case of an immigration crackdown in the city.
“We do not want Ann Arbor to wait until harm becomes normalized or until fear becomes routine,” Harrison said. “As a city government, we have a responsibility to lead by example. That means using our authority carefully and lawfully, and refusing to facilitate actions that undermine constitutional protections.”
There is a growing list of the local resources available for those affected by immigration enforcement:
MIRA: Movement for Immigrant Rights Action, https://sites.google.com/view/mira-washtenaw/, email [email protected]. Hotline for texting to report ICE sightings, (734) 224-3852. MIRA does training for observers and “Know Your Rights,” advocacy for immigrant rights with local government and police agencies, and public education/outreach around immigration issues.
WICIR: Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, wicir.org. WICIR offers direct aid to immigrant families in need and support for those affected by detentions, with an urgent response phone: (734) 355-2707
MIRC: Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, michiganimmigrant.org, legal support for immigrants. General immigrant services, (734) 239-6863; phone for detainees to call for free, (734) 794-9963; phone for families and friends of detainees to call, (734) 239-6863.
WCS: Washtenaw Congregational Sanctuary, network of 15+ congregations supporting immigrants, https://www.facebook.com/WashtenawCongregationalSanctuary/.
NDCM: No Detention Centers in Michigan, opposes ICE detention and supports detainees, https://nodetentioncentersmi.org/.
