GR Rapid Response to ICE

Saturday, August 24, 2019

To the Kent County Sheriff:

A year ago, in August 2018, dozens of Kent County residents joined organizers with GR Rapid
Response to ICE and Movimiento Cosecha for a rally outside the Kent County Jail to demand an immediate
end to the contract in place between the county and ICE. At that time, in the midst of rising outrage over the
appalling conditions in ICE detention centers and the cruelty of family separation at the border and
nationwide, the contract’s enforcement made it routine for the Kent County Sheriff’s Department to hold
immigrants for ICE at the jail for up to 48 hours even without signed federal warrants. ICE paid the county
$85 per person per night. Last August, immigrant organizers spoke about the fear their communities lived
with every day, knowing that their county of residence had a direct financial incentive to profile and target
them for arrest; that the state of Michigan continued to criminalize the everyday act of driving for
undocumented immigrants no longer able to obtain licenses; and that this jail was a site of complicity with an
agency responsible for untold suffering, inhumane detention, and death.

In January, the Sheriff’s Department announced an end to the practice of holding immigrants at the jail on
ICE’s administrative warrants. This decision was the result of continuous organizing among immigrant
communities in Kent County, as well as a national outcry over the mistreatment of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a
U.S. citizen and Marine veteran whose PTSD symptoms had been met with mockery from Grand Rapids
police officers before they turned him over to ICE for an impossible deportation. When the end to ICE holds
was announced, Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response recognized it for the victory it was. In some
crucial respects, though, little changed. Curt VanderKooi, the GRPD officer whose decision to facilitate
Ramos-Gomez’s kidnapping by ICE followed years of known anti-Black and anti-immigrant harassment,
remains on active duty even after the Civilian Appeal Board reversed the findings of an internal police
investigation that had exonerated him. And we always knew that an end to administrative holds was not a
true end to the contract. The county remains complicit. We understand that the jail still contacts ICE when
undocumented immigrants are released and that ICE agents continue to seize our immigrant neighbors with
the cooperation of the Kent County Sheriff’s Department.

25 immigrants have died in ICE custody over the last two and a half years. There will never be a complete
measure of the pain caused by family separation—a practice with precedent stretching back to the origins of
a nation built with forced labor on stolen land—or by the abuses that continue in concentration camps and
prisons around this country. Less than two weeks ago, outside one of those camps in Rhode Island, a guard
drove his truck into a crowd of Jewish protesters led by Never Again Action before other guards came out to
pepper-spray the crowd, sending five to the hospital. Never Again Action organizers asked: “If this is how a
predominantly white group of protesters is treated by ICE guards—who knew they were being recorded—
how are the people imprisoned inside these facilities being treated?”

We are here today with two reminders and a demand. First, Kent County maintains a shameful
contract with the agency that enforces this terror. Second, that contract expires next month. There is no
reason to renew it. Whatever Kent County may tell itself, it is not safe for immigrants while ICE maintains any
presence here. It is not a welcoming community while the county continues to collaborate. We demand that
Kent County end the contract for good, refuse to continue enabling a fascist deportation force, and cease all
contact with ICE.