Grand Rapids, MI community group provides education on how to respond to ICE raids

Grand Rapids, MI – On Saturday, January 19, community members took refuge from the freezing weather outside to attend a discussion and group training on how to take action against the threat of heightened ICE activity. The event took place in the crowded social hall in Fountain Street Church, with nearly 100 participants.

The organization putting on the event, Grand Rapids Rapid Response to ICE, provided the audience with plenty of context as to the urgency of the action. Kent County is home to a total of three ICE offices and it has been active in the area since the George W. Bush administration.

This event served as the launch of the organization and a response to the new threats coming from the Trump administration. Lead organizer Jeff Smith stated, “Expanding available sanctuaries by building relationships with churches and schools will be important. However, ICE officers could soon start to ignore those agreements, with being emboldened by the Trump administration.” Smith also said that they plan on launching campaigns to get the city of Grand Rapids to agree to become a sanctuary city, much like the campaigns active in other cities like Chicago.

The audience also got an introduction to what the Rapid Response training would look like, as attendees got to role play getting between a home targeted by ICE and ICE officers. The goal of the Rapid Response team is to document ICE officers and delay the raid as long as possible. Further training events will be hosted in the future, with the goal of training a large number of local community members to quickly respond to ICE raids in their neighborhoods.

In 2018 it was made public that the city of Grand Rapids had an extensive contract with ICE, including holding those in ICE custody in the Kent County Correctional Facility. The city of Grand Rapids was even being paid, by ICE, $85 per detainee each day they were in jail. The following year, ICE ended the contract – not at the request of the city, but only because of the mass support that protesters were receiving at city council meetings.

In order to allow at-risk community members to get in contact with the organization, a hotline has been created with bilingual members on the other end. The network of trained response members will then be contacted and deployed to defend the target of the ICE raid. A person in the audience shared their experience with direct action, saying, “Through community support like this, my brother was able to avoid apprehension by ICE and deportation.”

#GrandRapidsMI #MI #ImmigrantRights #ICE