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For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 17th, 2025

Grand Rapids, MI — Today, over 200 immigrant justice advocates in Michigan participated in Detention Watch Network’s “Communities Not Cages” National Day of Action. Hosted nationally by the American Friends Service Committee and the Immigrant Justice Network, the Day of Action denounced the Trump administration’s cruel detention and deportation agenda in over a dozen states. In Michigan, approximately 230 community members joined together in a rally and vigil to demand sanctuary in Grand Rapids and to speak out against the planned reopening of the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin as an ICE detention center.

Advocates say a focal point of Trump’s agenda is a multi-layered detention expansion plan, which if fully enacted will triple the amount of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Just this month, ICE issued a solicitation for “Emergency Detention and Related Services,” which could spend up to $45 billion over two years for new ICE jails and related operations. This is the latest move in the Trump administration’s cruel plan, which includes invoking an antiquated wartime act and partnering with authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele to outsource incarceration to El Salvador. Trump has also proliferated ICE operations into other government agencies, including the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Defense, using military bases as deportation hubs and growing ICE partnerships with local sheriffs and county jails. The administration has expanded surveillance, brought back family detention, and increased neighborhood and workplace raids that destabilize communities and disappear people—including students specifically targeted for their solidarity with Palestine—into ICE’s network, often sowing fear and confusion with facility transfers. 

In Michigan, advocates are concerned by the threat of the GEO Group’s North Lake Correctional Facility reopening as the largest detention center in the Midwest, and the incentives it would provide ICE to expand its already devastating operations in the area. North Lake was previously in use from 2019 through 2022 as a federal prison exclusively for people who were not U.S. citizens and had been convicted of federal crimes. From October 2019 through the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, No Detention Centers in Michigan and other groups documented medical neglect, discriminatory restricted confinement, inadequate food, and other unsafe conditions at North Lake, which led to at least six separate hunger strikes organized by predominantly Black immigrants in 2020 alone. In Grand Rapids, organizers with Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have continued to stress the urgent need for city officials to declare sanctuary status and enact protective policies for the safety and dignity of immigrants and their loved ones and communities throughout the region.

Advocates who participated in the national day of action issued the following statements:

Ewurama Appiagyei-Dankah from the ACLU of Michigan said: “The Trump administration has put a clear target on our immigrant friends and neighbors, which the GEO Group is exploiting for greed. The North Lake Correctional Facility has a well-documented and heartbreaking history of abuse, much like other detention centers throughout the country owned and operated by GEO. Reopening North Lake under the guise of creating jobs in Baldwin is a problematic distraction from GEO’s clear goal: bending to the will of the Trump administration, tearing families apart, and putting profit above all else.”

Gema Lowe from Movimiento Cosecha GR said: “It is crucial that we continue to speak out against detention centers—facilities that give ICE even more reach to harm immigrants in our communities. We must also demand that our local authorities stand with our immigrant communities to prevent further family separation. Our tax dollars are being funneled into public and private prisons, allowing them to profit off the pain and suffering of immigrant workers. Together, we are strong. Together, we resist. And together, we will win dignity, respect, and protection for all immigrants.”

Jose Rodriguez from GR Rapid Response to ICE said: “GR Rapid Response has been working directly with Movimiento Cosecha since 2017, mobilizing people who have been trained to directly intervene and prevent ICE from apprehending immigrants in Kent County. We also offer a whole range of mutual aid and solidarity support to families impacted by ICE violence. We oppose the GEO Group’s plan to transform the prison in Baldwin into an ICE detention facility, and we are committing to be part of the efforts to shut it down.”

Immigration attorney Richard Kessler said: “I have been an immigration lawyer for over 43 years and I cannot believe the current outrageous enforcement actions against immigrants that are taking place. I have visited the detention facilities—families are being ripped apart. The GEO Group is known to mistreat immigrants in order to make as much money as possible. We must wake up, stop the racist deportation machine, realize the social benefits of immigration and not allow big businesses to benefit while destroying our families and communities.”

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No Detention Centers in Michigan is a statewide coalition organizing to abolish immigration detention and migrant incarceration in Michigan and beyond.

Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.