The fear of federal immigration crackdowns is spreading through metro Detroit’s immigrant communities, keeping children out of schools, leaving businesses without workers, and forcing families to make gut-wrenching decisions about their safety and livelihoods.
In the weeks since President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has carried out raids in multiple cities across the country.
Although no large-scale raids have been publicly reported in Detroit, ICE agents have been increasingly spotted patrolling neighborhoods with large immigrant populations like Southwest Detroit, according to residents, activists, and elected officials.
The fear is destabilizing the lives of many immigrants and their families, and the impact goes far beyond them.
“It’s a very overwhelming and emotional time for people everywhere,” Odalis Perales, coalition coordinator and policy researcher at Michigan United, a statewide civil rights group, tells Metro Times. “I’m going to schools and doing Know Your Rights presentations. I talk to the parents, and I can see the fear in their eyes. Their eyes tear up because their kids are scared to leave their parents. These stories are very sad.”
In Southwest Detroit, many immigrants are avoiding public places where they might be spotted by ICE agents, and that has had a big impact on schools and businesses. Some workers have stopped showing up to their jobs, worried that a traffic stop or workplace visit could lead to detention and deportation.
On Tuesday evening, Southwest Detroit’s normally lively streets were eerily quiet and empty. Standing outside a food truck, Daniel Martinez, a second-generation immigrant, said he’s worried about his extended family and the devastating impact that an immigration crackdown would have on his community.
“We follow the law and contribute to our city,” Martinez said. “We’re not hurting anyone. We just want to be a part of this community as much as anyone. This whole thing is infuriating.”
The good news is, in times of a crisis, tight-knit migrant communities like Southwest Detroit rally to support each other. Many businesses, including restaurants, grocers, and pharmacies, have begun offering delivery services so people don’t have to venture out.
“The community is feeling vulnerable,” Laura Chavez-Wazeerud-Din, president and CEO of Southwest Detroit Business Association, tells Metro Times. “When you are undocumented and the state of Michigan doesn’t give you a drivers license, you live in constant fear. Many people don’t want to leave their homes.”
As a result, businesses are struggling. To maintain connections between businesses and their vulnerable customers, the Southwest Detroit Business Association is helping ease some of the fear and uncertainty by creating measures to protect the community.
“We want to be a trusted resource and provide solutions, and we are working with our businesses to craft ways to make sure they still get what they need, while also serving their community,” Chavez-Wazeerud-Din says. “We’re trying to elevate these different techniques and promote them so the residents are able to get the goods and services they need, and the businesses continue to thrive.”
Children are also staying home from school, which could have a lasting impact on their learning and development.
“When we had an illegal action by immigration right down the street, 80% of the students didn’t show up to school the next day,” U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said at a recent news conference in Southwest Detroit. “There is a real impact in our community when we only have enforcement, criminalization, and militarization in our neighborhoods. We’re getting calls all the time from nonprofit leaders, saying ‘We’re doing this work at a school. Should we stop?’ You absolutely should not stop. Continue to serve this beautiful community that continues to show up for all of us over and over again.”
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Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai P. Vitti recently sent a message to parents and staff, assuring them that the district “remains committed to protecting the rights of all students to have access to a free public education regardless of a child’s or family member’s immigration status.”
In 2019, the school board adopted the Sanctuary District Policy, which prohibits the district from turning over student records or children to immigration officials. But Trump signed an executive order last month, ending a policy that restricted ICE’s ability to arrest undocumented people at schools, hospitals, and houses of worship.
“This suggests that federal agents may now search or raid schools,” Vitti wrote in the message.
“These are certainly difficult times for our immigrant families and those of us who support them,” he added. “Please be assured that as a District we will always do everything within our influence and authority to protect and advocate for ALL our students and their families!!!”
The fear is also impacting college students whose parents may have a mixed status, activists say.
“What I’m really seeing is that a lot of our college students who either have papers or are undocumented, they are being impacted at the universities,” says Samantha Magdaleno, executive director of One Michigan, a youth immigrant rights organization. “Those that do have papers are taking the bus back home so they can go grocery shopping for their families and friends.”
Immigrant families are so fearful that they are even returning to their native countries, despite the poverty and violence that may be awaiting them, Magdaleno says. Those fears are heightened by the incendiary and xenophobic rhetoric of the Trump administration and the alarming news that detained migrants are being sent to Guantanamo Bay.
“What is happening this time that didn’t happen in the [2016] election, people are deciding to self-deport and leave,” Magdaleno says. “It’s mixed-status families. They heard about the concentration camps, and they don’t want their family to go through that. They’re selling their houses. We’re losing very good people who contribute to our economy every single day. This is something brand new.”
Throughout Trump’s campaign, he pledged to conduct a mass deportation operation. In nine days, ICE said it had arrested 7,400 people.
Trump boasted that ICE would remove immigrants with criminal histories, but so far the agency has provided very little information about the raids and how many of those picked up had criminal histories.
“We’re losing the next generation of engineers and doctors and lawyers,” Magdaleno says. “A majority of these families don’t have a criminal history, but they are scared because ICE is taking whoever they want to. They’re using racial profiling to pick up as many people as possible.”
Residents in need are feeling the impact of immigration issues hundreds of miles away. Hey Y’all Detroit, a local nonprofit that provides fresh food to low-income families in Southwest Detroit and Hamtramck, was forced to halt deliveries after the Texas farm that supplied its food lost much of its workforce. Fearing an impending ICE raid, workers there stayed home. The farm was later raided.
“It really, really hurts. It stings,” Charmane Neal, founder of Hey Y’all Detroit, says. “A lot of people we help are in very dire situations. Some of them don’t have running water or electricity. A lot of them don’t have transportation. So this is a huge blow.”
The Texas farm has been supplying Hey Y’All Detroit with produce for “virtually free for the last year and a half,” Neal says.
“Not only did they do that, but they contacted farms in the same area so we could get things like cheese, milk, and eggs. Just the sheer kindness of the farmers has been absolutely amazing.”
As Hey Y’All Detroit looks for a new food supply, it launched a fundraising campaign to help secure a building to centralize operations. The group also acquired three community gardens and will be working with local farms. Hey Y’All Detroit also submitted grant applications for delivery vehicles and a building.
“Our plan is to crowdsource food locally,” the fundraiser states. “This will involve working with homesteads, home gardens, local farmers, farmers in Southeast Michigan, and food resource programs.”
When word got out about the Texas farm, Hey Y’All Detroit’s Facebook page became bombarded with hateful, anti-immigrant messages, indicating a growing hostility toward immigrants.
“Our comment section has been flooded with racist and bigoted remarks—and we will not tolerate it,” Neal wrote on Facebook. “I’ve had my phone in my hands 24/7 deleting hateful comments.”
She added, “We stand for unity, compassion, and respect—there is no place for hate here. PERIOD.”
Detroit City Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero, whose district includes Southwest Detroit, is worried about her community. She says ICE agents recently detained a man from a local soccer field “in front of his wife and kids after being here for over 30 years with no criminal record.”
She says it’s critical that residents don’t buy into the division created by Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric.
“We are an important piece of the fabric of this community, but we are being divided,” Santiago-Romero says. “This will impact all of us. Not only are they destroying families, they are destroying communities.”
Tlaib, a frequent critic of Trump and his bigoted rhetoric, says the community must unite to combat the hate.
“Our immigrant neighbors are under attack,” Tlaib says. “I want the current administration to know, you are not going to divide us by stoking fear in the community and targeting our neighbors, many of whom have been here for decades,” Tlaib says. “They are some of the most hardworking, loving community members you will ever find.”
Perales says it’s important for immigrant families to know their rights, stay informed, and help out each other.
“This anti-immigrant rhetoric makes it easy for us all to fall into despair,” Perales says. “It’s very important to lift each other up and be informed and prepared and hopeful and ready to act. This is an opportunity for us to come together and have solidarity. By uplifting each other, we can organize strategically and focus on this idea of love combating the hatefulness that is going around. We can really see that happening in Southwest Detroit.”
