Author: nodetentioncentersmi

PRESS RELEASE: In Wake of Mass Hunger Strike, Conditions at North Lake Processing Center Draw International Condemnation and Concern

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For Immediate Release: Monday, May 18th, 2026

Contact: No Detention Centers in Michigan, info@nodetentioncentersmi.org

Baldwin, MI — A month after hundreds of people held in immigration detention at the North Lake Processing Center launched rolling hunger and work strikes across multiple units in response to inhumane conditions, inadequate medical care, and legal delays, new reports and organizing have continued to highlight the urgency of their unmet demands.

Owned and operated by the Florida-based GEO Group since its construction as a for-profit youth prison in the late 1990s, North Lake is currently the largest detention center in the Midwest. The strikes beginning last month—which spread without formal leadership and were met with threats of retaliation from GEO staff—echo earlier chapters in the facility’s history. Extensively documented hunger strikes at North Lake in 2020 led to blanket denials from the GEO Group, just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement attempted to deny recent actions despite participants’ testimony to attorneys, family members, and reporters.

The partnership between GEO and ICE has faced new scrutiny in the past week following the announcement that David Venturella, a former GEO executive, will lead the federal agency. 

“People suffering in detention in Baldwin launched these strikes at great risk to their own health, and held on as long as possible despite GEO employees threatening them with transfer to other facilities,” said Ale Rojas of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “This act of bravery was a plea for connection. By denying themselves a human need, they hoped we would listen to the message they sent—we are in pain, suffering, being killed, underfed, untreated, isolated, and our humanity is being ignored; please do not look away. In response, people around the state, the country, and the world have expressed solidarity with those who undertook this action, as well as horror at the conditions that prompted it.”

Those conditions received further attention in a letter regarding North Lake sent last week to the Detroit ICE Field Office by the ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. The letter details numerous instances of “the denial of adequate medical care, which threatens the health and lives of all individuals held there; restrictions on attorney access, which severely limit the ability of individuals to exercise their fundamental rights to seek release from detention and pursue legal relief; and interference with access to immigration proceedings.” Responding to another example of denial of medical care, on Monday advocates called North Lake en masse to demand that an immigrant with mental health challenges receive his prescribed psychiatric medication.

In a related decision likely to affect thousands of immigration cases in Michigan and three other states, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals joined two other federal appeals courts last week in declaring the Trump administration’s “mandatory detention” policy unconstitutional and affirming the right to bond hearings. Even with such hearings, however, many immigrants like Byron Martinez of Grand Rapids—whose violent detention by ICE in conjunction with the Grand Rapids Police Department inspired a support campaign led by Movimiento Cosecha Grand Rapids and GR Rapid Response to ICE—have ultimately seen their requests for bond rejected. Martinez, who has been detained at North Lake for over 100 days, was denied asylum on Friday, May 15th.

On Sunday, around 50 protesters gathered outside the prison in Baldwin to amplify the still-unmet demands of the strikes. Statements were shared from a woman who had recently been released from North Lake, from organizers working against ICE’s plans to open a new warehouse detention facility in Romulus, and from Amu Gib, an incarcerated UK activist and member of Palestine Action who took part in a 50-day hunger strike last year, stressing intersections among global struggles against detention, border regimes, and militarism.

“In December 2025, Nenko Stanev Gantchev was killed in North Lake,” Gib observed in their statement, recorded on April 27th, “the same way Jimmy Mubenga was killed by G4S. This is not the only way. Migration is life.” Acknowledging the hundreds of participants in the strikes in Michigan, Gib added: “We must take seriously their urgent call for liberation—not just of their individual bodies, but of the borders that cage the face of the earth. The deadly logic of the empire, of the nation-state, becomes: ‘Live for me, die for me, or kill for me’’; and the hunger striker replies, in simple terms, ‘We do not belong to you. We refuse your borders. In our hearts we will be free; in our bodies we will wake up and ache for our lives.’”

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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.

PRESS RELEASE: Renewed ICE Hunger and Work Strikes Continue Over Weekend in Baldwin, Despite Intimidation and Denials

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For Immediate Release: Monday, April 27th, 2026

Contact: No Detention Centers in Michigan, info@nodetentioncentersmi.org

Baldwin, MI — With new reports continuing to emerge over the past week of medical crises leaving many in fear for their safety, immigrants held inside and recently released from the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin affirmed that the collective hunger strike and work stoppage launched on Monday, April 20th, had restarted on Saturday in multiple units after a pause, and had proceeded through the weekend. Information provided by individuals in detention or freed late last week suggested that this temporary pause on the strikes was partly due to external pressure from GEO Group employees.

“The hunger and work strike is happening,” said Juan, an immigrant recently released from North Lake on a habeas corpus petition, in a translated statement using a pseudonym. “Some people involved have been sanctioned; others do not have any violations. But they have all suffered abuse. Today, Saturday, April 25th, people are refusing to go to work to protest the lack of medical care. The conditions at the prison are truly deplorable. If you are in pain, they don’t care about your symptoms, they just tell you to take Tylenol and that’s it. And there are people who are suffering from many different illnesses with no treatment whatsoever.”

Responding to announcements from Immigration and Customs Enforcement denying any hunger strike at the detention facility, which is owned and operated by the Florida-based GEO Group, Juan added: “The government is lying, as always, when they say there is no strike. There are people who want to speak and want their voices to be heard, so that people on the outside can see with their own eyes that ICE is lying.”

The statement was shared by advocates both at a Saturday afternoon rally in Romulus—where hundreds of protesters participated in a national day of action against ICE expansion at the site of a warehouse purchased in February for use as a detention center—and on Sunday afternoon in Baldwin, where over 70 supporters of the strikers’ demands met to express their sustained solidarity and to play music for those detained. Participants in both events also read statements from Women’s Collective Civil Action, a group of over a dozen women who filed a joint habeas corpus petition this month describing further medical neglect and violations of their constitutional rights in detention.

“These women are speaking out at great personal risk,” said Ale Rojas of No Detention Centers in Michigan, “and the hundreds of men striking at this facility have done so to draw attention to terrifying systemic conditions that threaten both physical and mental health. These men have been going against their human instinct to eat and survive because they want us to know that they are being mistreated. Constant neglect and mistreatment have negative effects on mental health and overall feelings of belongingness which are essential to human survival. A man at North Lake attempted suicide last week. Guards have been highlighting the names of people refusing meals and threatening them with transfer if they continue. If there is no hunger strike, why have they been taking people’s names?”

Originally built in 1999 as the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, North Lake has closed and reopened four times, with its most recent incarnation as an immigrant-only federal prison also having seen documented hunger strikes denied by the GEO Group. The ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center are calling on Congress to require an independent investigation. Michigan Multifaith Clergy Rapid Response, a statewide network of faith leaders, has announced a solidarity fast and week of action in which over 135 people will participate

“Multi-faith leaders from across the state are calling on Michiganders to join in solidarity with the people detained at the North Lake Processing Center,” said Rev. Greta Jo Seidohl, Unitarian Universalist Minister, serving All Souls Community Church of West Michigan. “The Solidarity Fast is a call to amplify the courageous actions of the hunger strikers and class-action coalition through spiritual reflection and social action. Folks participating are sent a daily prayer and action to take. Anyone is invited to join us. And if you can’t fast, please take the time to amplify the messages coming from North Lake and being shared by MI Clergy Rapid Response—it costs you nothing and could mean everything.”

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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.

PRESS RELEASE: Amid Expressions of Solidarity from Outside and Retaliation from GEO Group, Hunger Strike at North Lake Processing Center Enters Third Day

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For Immediate Release: Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026

Contact: No Detention Centers in Michigan, info@nodetentioncentersmi.org

Baldwin, MI — After declining food for two full days in protest against medical neglect, unsafe conditions, and legal delays often resulting in extended confinement, immigrants imprisoned at the GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin confirmed on Wednesday that many were continuing their hunger strike.

“Today marks the third day without food,” said one participant in a translated statement on Wednesday afternoon. “As a result of our hunger strike—staged to fight against the violation of our rights—they are now also taking away our recreation time. We remain steadfast here; our unit has gone without eating for three days now, and we will continue to hold out.”

Around 50 advocates gathered on Tuesday afternoon outside the privately owned detention center, the largest facility of its kind in the Midwest, to express solidarity with the hundreds confirmed to be participating in the collective strike and to hear statements from men and women inside, who likewise expressed their support for the protest. Those detained in one unit held handmade signs to show through the windows, including one crying out ‘SOS.’

“We have no answers to our questions, and everyone here has questions,” said Ahmad Alnajdawi, an immigrant from Jordan, in a message shared on Tuesday afternoon. “I have a lot of people here who speak Arabic, and this is very hard for them. They cannot talk to the case managers; they cannot talk to ICE officers; they cannot talk to anyone. The food here is pitiful. I want the people outside to know, they’re treating us like animals. Everyone here has a family, a wife, a parent, a dad, a mom. Everyone here has people outside who care for them. We’re all humans.”

At a time of unprecedented expansion of the federal government’s detention and deportation machine—with ICE seeking to grow its detention capacity in Michigan further via the recent contested purchase of an industrial warehouse in Romulus—the collective action at North Lake also echoes reports of a similar ongoing hunger strike at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, in response to inadequate food and medical care. Like North Lake, Moshannon Valley is a privately owned GEO Group facility which had ended a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons within the last five years, only to reopen soon after as an immigration detention center.

“The ongoing hunger strike at North Lake reflects the awful history of this prison, which should never have been built in the first place; and along with strikes at Moshannon Valley and other facilities around the country, it is also a reminder that immigration detention is not safe for anyone,” said Ale Rojas of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “This courageous collective action is a response to the dehumanization and abuse that are endemic to ICE detention, where immigrants are used as scapegoats so corporations like the GEO Group may continue to build their profits unchecked. Centering our humanity and the humanity of every person who has been kidnapped by ICE is the only way forward.”

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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.

PRESS RELEASE: Immigrants Launch Multi-Unit Hunger Strike at Baldwin Detention Center, Protesting Dire Conditions and Unconstitutional Captivity

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For Immediate Release: Tuesday, April 21st, 2026

Contact: No Detention Centers in Michigan, info@nodetentioncentersmi.org

Baldwin, MI — Citing dangerous conditions, a lack of adequate food and medical care, and cruel legal obstacles that have kept many in captivity with no end in sight, immigrants held at the GEO Group’s privately owned North Lake Processing Center announced on Monday that a majority of men imprisoned in multiple units had chosen to go without food.

“We demand competent doctors, better medical care—the food here is absolute garbage—and, above all, an end to the procedural delays we are suffering through inside these walls,” said one immigrant detained at North Lake, in a translated statement. “We are being held prisoner arbitrarily. The majority of us meet all the requirements to be released, yet judges capriciously deny us bond and the basic rights to which we are entitled. We need to get out of here and to be treated like human beings.”

The newly declared hunger strike represents both a response to the intensification of disturbing trends in immigration enforcement across the region and the country—with deaths in ICE detention now at a record high—and the continuation of a long history of unrest at this isolated Northern Michigan prison. Immigrant advocates plan to gather in Baldwin this week in support of those held against their will and their efforts to secure their freedom.

Built in 1999 as the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, North Lake has closed and reopened four times. Its previous incarnation as an immigrant-only federal prison from 2019 to 2022 saw multiple deaths as well as six separate hunger strikes, primarily organized by Black men confined in the Restricted Housing Unit, who named similar concerns relating to medical neglect, inadequate food, and abuse from staff.

Since reopening in June 2025 as the largest ICE detention center in the Midwest, North Lake has consistently imprisoned over 1,000 people, including hundreds found by federal judges to have been unlawfully detained. In recent months, immigrants held by ICE and the GEO Group have described both an increasingly unsafe environment—with countless medical issues going unaddressed, following the death of Bulgarian national Nenko Gantchev last December—and a steep decline in the judicial approval of bonds that would allow some to pursue their immigration cases outside of detention. In mid-April, a group of over a dozen women in a separate unit filed a joint habeas corpus petition, recounting their conditions of confinement and constitutional violations. These worsening conditions have led to heightened alarm as ICE seeks to expand its presence in Michigan further with the February purchase of a warehouse in Romulus, in spite of massive community opposition.

“The prevailing feeling is one of deep discontent regarding the injustices faced in immigration courts,” another person detained at North Lake observed through a translator. “There are complaints regarding the lack of expediency in case processing, a lack of sound judgment and impartiality in judges’ rulings, the mass denial of cases, and a lack of legal aid. Immigrants are being treated as ‘blank checks’—exploited as a source of revenue for this private detention company. Please help us address the injustices currently taking place here.”

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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.

ICE Out of Romulus, ICE Out of Everywhere

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While over 1,400 people face unacceptable conditions at the GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin—currently the largest detention center in the Midwest—ICE wants to grow its presence in Michigan even further, with a new warehouse to imprison up to 500 immigrants in Romulus.

This plan would continue the unprecedented expansion of an inherently inhumane, racist, and deadly system, which claimed the lives of over 30 people in 2025 alone, including Nenko Gantchev at North Lake. It has long been clear that ICE cannot be reformed; it must be abolished. Detention threatens everyone’s safety, and ICE is not welcome in Michigan.

Join community groups at Romulus City Hall on Monday, 2/23 at 5:30pm to say NO to immigration detention in Romulus or anywhere!

Rest in Peace, Nenko Stanev Gantchev

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We are devastated to hear of the preventable death of Nenko Stanev Gantchev on Monday at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin. No one should have to die behind those walls.

And we are deeply troubled, but not surprised, by the echoes of past events at this facility. In recent weeks, we’ve heard many disturbing reports of inadequate medical care and outbreaks of contagious illnesses at North Lake. Whatever the full story of Nenko’s death may be, what we know for sure is that prisons and detention centers, by their nature, create the conditions for medical crises to develop and pose grave threats to the health of incarcerated people and the communities around them. Detention is deadly.

We saw this in 2020, when the GEO Group’s response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic included denying access to essential protective equipment, giving incarcerated people false information, and punishing hunger strikers by shutting off their clean water. This mismanagement, compounded by the Bureau of Prisons’ reckless decision to continue chaotic transfers from one facility to another, led to multiple deaths at North Lake.

At that time, the facility was a federal immigrant-only prison—another facet of the same deportation machine—and the BOP had a national map that purportedly showed COVID cases among the population in federal custody. For months, as desperate families sought updates on their loved ones, North Lake was not on the map. It was a shadow prison. Now it is an ICE detention center, and, needless to say, medical care for people held there has not improved. The lack of appropriate care and other appalling conditions faced by people caged there for profit by the GEO Group are emblematic of the U.S. immigration detention system and its inherent terror and cruelty.

On November 1st, the Day of the Dead, we held a vigil in Grand Rapids and joined immigrant advocates around the country in honoring 25 lives lost in ICE custody since the beginning of the second Trump administration. We fear that this number will continue to rise until we collectively free them all. As we work to find answers and tangible next steps, we must remember that there is no good reason for North Lake or any such facility to exist, that scapegoating our immigrant neighbors is not a solution for anyone, and that a world that affirms everyone’s safety, dignity and humanity is possible.

¡Nenko Stanev Gantchev, Presente!

PRESS RELEASE: Immigrant Rights Advocates in Grand Rapids Hold Day of the Dead Vigil to Honor Lives Lost in ICE Custody

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For Immediate Release: Monday, November 3rd, 2025

Grand Rapids, MI — On Saturday, November 1st, No Detention Centers in Michigan, Movimiento Cosecha GR, GR Rapid Response to ICE, and the ACLU of Michigan brought over 100 people together for a vigil at the downtown field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of Detention Watch Network’s Day of the Dead National Actions to remember and honor lives lost to immigration detention. Solidarity vigils and actions around the country recognized that at least 25 deaths have occurred in ICE custody in just nine months, a record number within a calendar year since 2006, including three deaths by suicide.

“The inhumane conditions inside these centers, whether state-run or privately operated for profit, have claimed lives,” said Gema Lowe, an organizer with Movimiento Cosecha GR. “These are places where pain is monetized, where medical neglect and institutional indifference have become a death sentence. We are here to demand the closure of all detention centers. But we are also here to turn our grief into strength. To cry for immigrants torn from their families is to honor them, but to fight for justice is to keep them alive.”

Organizers and faith leaders stressed that West Michigan immigrant communities continue to face intensifying ICE violence in connection with the June reopening of the GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, 65 miles north of Grand Rapids. Currently the largest detention center in the Midwest, North Lake has seen worsening conditions in recent weeks, with reports of chaotic transfers, long lockdowns, unsanitary water, and inedible food, as it approaches its full capacity of 1,800. Consistent with a long and well-documented history of abuse and neglect, North Lake’s previous use by the federal government as an immigrant-only prison led to at least six hunger strikes and the loss of multiple lives, including that of Félix Repilado Martínez, whose death from COVID-19 in May 2020 was disturbingly mishandled and misrepresented by the GEO Group.

Immigration justice advocates led by Witness Baldwin also gathered outside North Lake on Saturday afternoon. Attendees at the vigil in Grand Rapids heard the names of 25 immigrants who died in ICE custody in the past year, as well as a recording from one person recently released from North Lake on a habeas corpus petition and a Day of the Dead message recorded by another immigrant who remains in detention.

“We need to be resisting what ICE is doing every day in this community,” said Jeff Smith, a member of GR Rapid Response to ICE, who noted that local groups have launched a boycott of businesses owned by Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand over his refusal to back concrete sanctuary policies that would limit ICE activity in the city. “Rapid Response works directly with Movimiento Cosecha, and we do the defensive work, which means trying to reduce the level of harm being directed at the affected community. This is what we can do to prevent having to come back here every year and read another list of names of people who died in detention. La lucha sigue.”

“Detention is deadly. People in immigration detention are describing it as ‘hell on earth’ because it is. What we’re seeing now is a heightened cruelty under the Trump administration,” said Nanci Palacios, Organizing and Membership Director at Detention Watch Network. “Our message is clear: Immigrant lives are of value, and immigrants deserve safety, dignity and respect. We mourn the loss of life in ICE custody, valued loved ones who deserved to return to their families alive.”

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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.

PRESS RELEASE: Conditions Worsen at GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center

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For Immediate Release: Tuesday, September 30th, 2025

Baldwin, MI — Immigrants imprisoned at the GEO Group’s privately owned North Lake Processing Center, as well as their families and loved ones from around the state and beyond, report that conditions inside North Lake have continued to deteriorate since the facility reopened in mid-June as the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest.

“They’re treating them worse now,” said one person whose loved one is detained at North Lake. “Before, they would lock them in the cells for just about 40 minutes for the routine count, but now it’s three hours. They’re not even taking them to the dining hall anymore, they just bring the food to the cells. At night it’s hard to sleep, too, because the lights get turned on in the middle of the night or officers shine flashlights right in their faces.”

Expressing similar concerns regarding procedures followed at North Lake by the GEO Group—the country’s largest ICE contractor, whose executives have heralded “unprecedented growth opportunities” under the second Trump administration—another relative of an immigrant held in Baldwin described a chaotic atmosphere: “They are locking down our families for hours now. They ‘lose’ people and punish everyone else for their mistakes. A detainee tried to kill himself a couple of weeks ago. The guards hurried and moved him away.”

Family members contacted No Detention Centers in Michigan, a coalition advocating for immigrants detained around the state, to share these reports, but requested anonymity for fear of retaliation against their loved ones.

Although exact numbers are difficult to locate, hundreds of men and women have been transported to Baldwin in recent weeks for indeterminate incarceration as the federal government pursues an immense expansion of its detention and deportation machine. Immigrant organizers in West Michigan have continued to pressure local government officials to adopt sanctuary policies, citing alarming escalations in ICE tactics and reports of plans to purchase more office space in Grand Rapids for immigration enforcement in the coming months. In Lake County, organizers with ties to Witness at the Border have called on supporters to join them in observing the operations of the North Lake facility and defending the rights of the community members held inside. On Saturday, September 27th, the GEO Group responded to the announcement of a peaceful gathering of witnesses outside the detention center by cancelling family visitation for the day.

“We are here to observe, to let the community, the staff, and the incarcerated people know that we will never look away,” said Marjorie Ziefert, a coordinator for Witness Baldwin. “Witnessing sheds light on acts that are being committed in the dark. The GEO Group’s decision to block vital family visits, supposedly in response to a group of us on the outside exercising our First Amendment rights, represents nothing but a continuation of the heartlessness they have practiced for decades in their pursuit of profit and an effort to further isolate people who are caged in this facility from those on the outside who support them. We do not want to be intimidated by the GEO Group’s cruelty.”

First built in 1999 as the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, North Lake has closed and reopened four times in the last three decades. It was last open under a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to hold people who were not U.S. citizens and who had been convicted of federal crimes. After three years of turmoil, including multiple deaths and hunger strikes, North Lake shut down in 2022 following an executive order from the Biden administration that ended the use of private prisons by the Department of Justice.

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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.

PRESS RELEASE: Amid Punitive Cancellation of Family and Attorney Visits, Hundreds Again Rally in Solidarity with Immigrants Held in Baldwin Detention Center

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For Immediate Release: Monday, September 8th, 2025

Baldwin, MI — On Saturday, September 6th, for the second time this summer, over 200 members and supporters of No Detention Centers in Michigan, a statewide coalition, gathered outside the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, formerly known as the North Lake Correctional Facility. Attendees traveled from across the state and the region to show concern and solidarity with the hundreds of immigrants who are now held in Baldwin for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the GEO Group, the Florida-based private company that owns the prison. The GEO Group had earlier informed people detained at North Lake that family visits would be cancelled for the day, following the announcement of the demonstration.

“Cancelling family visitation is a cruel, punitive and arbitrary response,” said Mindy Domke, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan, who noted that attorney visits had also been described as “unavailable” until Sunday. “The GEO Group did not have to do this. They are looking for any excuse to isolate people even further, extending their fundamental practice of cutting off our immigrant friends and loved ones from their support networks and the outside world. It’s yet another reminder of why we oppose the system of immigration detention in the first place.”

In the first three months since North Lake reopened under an ICE contract, reports have begun to emerge of harsh conditions that reflect longstanding and disturbing trends in U.S. detention facilities, with immigrants describing inadequate food and delays in their legal cases resulting in indeterminate confinement. Saturday’s demonstration highlighted the voices and stories of several people detained both at North Lake and at related facilities in the Midwest and beyond, as the Trump administration continues an unprecedented expansion of ICE operations with threats over the weekend to send federal troops to Chicago. Organizers shared additional statements from family members and loved ones of immigrants in detention, encouraging supporters to donate to their fundraising campaigns and to return to Baldwin for a sustained witnessing presence near the facility in the future. Members of multiple faith traditions participated in the rally.

“The members and movements of Fountain Street have stood beside you and will continue to stand beside you,” Rev. Nathan Dannison of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids told the assembled crowd in a recorded message. “You have allies in the faithful people of Grand Rapids. Any Christian who knows their Bible can tell you, somewhere inside the North Lake facility, a baby is being born into a manger. Somewhere inside the North Lake concentration camp, the soldiers of GEO Group are nailing Jesus Christ to the cross. Your actions today will serve as a testimony to our grandchildren—that we refused. We say, Basta! Enough!”

First built in 1999, North Lake was last open under a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to incarcerate people who were not U.S. citizens and who had been convicted of federal crimes. The prison shut down for the fourth time in 2022 following an executive order from the Biden administration that ended contracts between private prison companies and the Department of Justice, only to reopen in mid-June as the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest.

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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.

PRESS RELEASE: Over 30 Groups Sign Open Letter Urging Governor Whitmer to Reject Federal Funds for New Detention Centers, End State Collaboration with GEO Group

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​​​​​​For immediate release: Tuesday, August 5th, 2025

Lansing, MI – Today, over 30 organizations predominantly based in Michigan sent an open letter to Governor Gretchen Whitmer calling for a public commitment to reject funds recently made available to states by the federal government for the construction of new immigration detention centers.

Drafted by the No Detention Centers in Michigan coalition (NDCM), the letter comes in the wake of the announcement last month of a “detention support grant program” operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with $608 million available for the construction of facilities modeled after the recently built prison camp in the Everglades. This Florida camp has already seen multiple lawsuits challenging rights violations, with immigrants imprisoned there reporting inhumane conditions including a lack of access to water, insufficient food, and religious discrimination.

“Conditions such as these,” the letter notes, “are endemic to the U.S. immigration detention system. They will only worsen as the Trump administration continues its push for an unprecedented expansion of the detention and deportation machine, with increasing reports nationwide of death, medical neglect, discrimination, abuse, and punitive transfers. […] We know that whatever new prisons are built will come with their own incentives to be filled, and that the continued growth of this cruel apparatus represents a key facet of an emboldened white nationalist program.”

The ongoing expansion of the immigration detention system has involved the allocation of over $150 billion for immigration enforcement and the reopening of many previously shuttered carceral facilities, including the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin. After a chaotic and deadly stint as a federal immigrant-only prison beginning in October 2019, North Lake shut down in 2022, only to reopen with an ICE contract in June 2025 as the largest detention center in the Midwest and one of the largest in the country. Immigrant advocates in Michigan have continued to report escalated raids and abductions by ICE over the course of recent months in connection with these broad trends and with the reopening of the Baldwin prison. NDCM’s letter accordingly highlights further concerns regarding Governor Whitmer’s record on immigration justice, including the collaboration under her leadership between the state-funded Michigan Works! agency and the Florida-based GEO Group on hiring staff for North Lake.

“The Trump administration’s current attempt to weaponize FEMA as an additional tool of mass imprisonment and deportation,” NDCM’s letter to Governor Whitmer states, “is emblematic of a white supremacist agenda that prioritizes the sadistic scapegoating of immigrants over the provision of resources needed for all people’s safety and flourishing. We urge you to reject this agenda by making a public commitment not to participate in FEMA’s detention grant program, and we call on you to ensure that Michigan Works! will no longer collaborate with the GEO Group to cage human beings in Michigan for the profit of GEO’s shareholders.”

“The last thing Michigan needs is more prisons for immigrants or for anyone else,” said Richard Kessler, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “It’s already unacceptable that Michigan Works! is funneling taxpayer money and resources toward the GEO Group so they can cash in on tearing families apart and locking up our immigrant neighbors in Baldwin. The news about FEMA is another reminder that private prisons aren’t the only problem. What allows companies like GEO to swoop in and profit from suffering is the agenda set by the federal government. And it’s very clear to us that this administration will go after immigrants with whatever methods they can. We hope the governor will take a strong position against ICE and the GEO Group’s attacks. Either way, our communities will keep fighting back together.”

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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.