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.