No Cinco De Mayo Immigration Enforcement: Detroit Police Chief

DETROIT, MI — Immigrants attending the Cinco de Mayo parade next month won’t have to worry about sweeps by the Detroit Police Department, Police Chief James Craig said Saturday. Concern of a crackdown during the event has heightened, but Craig said during a conference of the Society for Professional Journalists that his department won’t be targeting immigrants who may be in the country without documentation, The Detroit News reported.

“What the Detroit Police Department will not do is stop people and check whether they’re legally documented or not,” he said. “That’s not our job.”

Through executive orders and other actions, President Trump signaled to undocumented immigrants that his administration will more vigorously enforce immigration law and step up deportations.

However, Craig said that during Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s visit to Detroit last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they don’t want local jurisdictions involved in immigration enforcement.

“We’re not trained to do it, and frankly I don’t want to do it,” Craig said at the SPJ conference. “I’ve got enough to do with the challenges that we’re dealing with every day.”

Craig also has said he has received assurances that ICE and Homeland Security won’t target the Cinco de Mayo parade and festival. What’s unclear is whether Michigan State Police and other police jurisdictions plan immigration enforcement activities.

ICE agents have conducted a series of raids in Metro Detroit, including one last month in which about 50 Latinos were detained in an an illegal gambling and cockfighting raid in southwest Detroit in an area that is known locally as Mexicantown. Those detained in the raid are being held in Youngstown, Ohio, and their hearings will be held in Kansas City, Missouri, raising questions about whether they haveadequate access to legal counsel.

That was among topics addressed during Kelly’s visit.

“I pointed out the extreme chilling effect on access to counsel that distant detention and even more distant courts in third locations has and urged coordination in the event of future major enforcement actions to ensure local detention space or alternatives to detention were available,” Susan Reed, of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, told the Detroit Free Press. “Secretary Kelly indicated very clearly that people would be detained wherever there was bed space available.”

Photo by katesheets via Flickr Commons