Where candidates for Michigan’s 29th District state Senate seat stand on immigration policy and ICE
MLive just posted an article on 4 policy positions for the three Democrats running for the 29th District state Senate seat.
As has been their practice in recent years MLive election coverage is not journalism, rather they are merely providing a platform for candidates without any investigation or verification on immigration policy stances or where they stand on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All of these candidates have been elected and two are currently acting as elected officials, both Groff-Blaszak and Skaggs. However, all three have had an opportunity to vote on matters that are related to ICE and immigration matters.
I am re-posting how each candidate responded to the question – What is your position on due process, First Amendment, and Fourth Amendment rights for all Michigan residents, including noncitizens, and what changes, if any, would you support? After each of their responses I will include my own response and analysis in italics.
Diaz: I am against the Laken Riley Act, everyone deserves and has a right to due process and legal representation. We need state laws and Constitutional amendments that safeguard these rights.
It is good to know that candidate Diaz is against the Laken Riley Act, but that is federal policy, not state policy. Having Due process and legal representation are certainly important, but ICE doesn’t care about these things and is arresting and detaining immigrants practically every day in the 29th District. Candidate Diaz doesn’t provide concrete actions or policy that would put an end to ICE terrorizing people in the 29th District. Lastly, when candidate Diaz was a Kent County Commissioner did he oppose funding for the Kent County Sheriff’s Office and the Kent County Jail, since these entities have consistently collaborated with ICE and continue the practice of ICE holds?
Groff-Blaszak: State government has a responsibility to protect the civil rights of all residents, regardless of immigration status. I support prohibiting collaboration between federal immigration agents and state and local law enforcement without a judicial warrant, strengthening habeas corpus protections in the Michigan Constitution, prohibiting immigration detention centers in Michigan, and protecting certain spaces from immigration enforcement to prevent the suppression of 1st Amendment rights. I also support the prosecution of any and all persons for the violation of individuals’ rights under these expanded state laws to the fullest extent possible.
Candidate Groff-Blaszak says she supports “prohibiting collaboration between federal immigration agents and state and local law enforcement without a judicial warrant”, which is a good start, but just because ICE agents obtain a judicial warrant doesn’t make it right and it certainly doesn’t protect the majority of undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes. I was delighted to see that candidate Groff-Blaszak state that they would prohibit immigration detention centers in Michigan, but wondered it that would mean they would work to shut down the largest ICE detention center in the midwest, the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan? Lastly, it is important to note that as an East Grand Rapids City Commissioner she was one of two commissioners that proposed a resolution that would prohibit the East GR police from cooperating with ICE. The proposed resolution was defeated.
Skaggs: At our best, West Michigan welcomes New Americans, immigrants and refugees. We encourage them – Bosnians, Mexicans, Congolese, Bhutanese, Vietnamese and many more – to put down roots, share their strengths, and thrive here.
Trump’s ICE is breaking the law, killing people and terrorizing communities. In Michigan, legislators should establish safe zones in schools, prohibit masked officers, and ban racial profiling.
The federal government should defend the Constitution and abolish ICE. No more warrantless arrests or home invasions. Instead, Washington must deliver comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to legality and citizenships.
While the Trump administration is terrorizing immigrants in the 29th District, so did the Bush, Obama and Biden Administrations, since all administrations have approved funding for ICE since 2003 when ICE was created.
When candidate Skaggs says that Michigan “legislators should establish safe zones in schools, prohibit masked officers, and ban racial profiling,” such actions won’t stop ICE from terrorizing immigrants. In fact, what Skaggs, other candidates and elected officials are proposing wouldn’t abolish ICE it would mere implement optic reforms that would do nothing to stop ICE from arresting, detaining and deporting immigrants.
Also, for Skaggs to say he wants to abolish ICE seems rather shallow and performative, since as his time as a State Representative he did not get Driver’s Licenses for All passed, which would have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain a drivers license in Michigan. As a Kent County Commissioner Skaggs not only opposed the immigrant-led group Cosecha’s demand to get Kent County to end their contract with ICE. In fact, Skaggs repeatedly mocked these efforts. Years later Skaggs tried to take credit for the ICE contract being ended, which I wrote about here.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning that none of these candidates mentioned the work that Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE are doing, which is to push for local sanctuary policies, disrupt the efforts of ICE to arrest and detain immigrants, and to provide a wage range of Mutual Aid resources to families affected by ICE. Also, none of the candidates center the lived experiences of the families and communities most affected by ICE.
In the late Spring/early summer of 2018 people all across the US were outraged at the fact that immigrant families were being separated and the immigrant children were being detained in makeshift cages. Cosecha tapped into this anger right here in Kent County by letting people that immigrant families were being separated right here and that Kent County had a contract with ICE, which began in 2012 during the Obama Administration.
The contract that Kent County had was that whenever an undocumented immigrant was brought to the Kent County Jail, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office would notify ICE and ask if they wanted the jail to hold that person for ICE. The benefit for Kent County was that they would be financially compensated for every undocumented immigrant they held for ICE per day. The Kent County Jail would get $85 per person, per day to hold immigrants for ICE, according to the contract.
Organizers didn’t find out about the ICE contract with Kent County until March of 2018. After several months of meetings and planning, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE began a campaign to end the contract that Kent County had with ICE on June 28th, 8 years ago.
The first public action was at the Kent County Commission meeting, where 250 showed up, which is the most that have ever showed up to a county commission meetings, since they are held at 8:30am on Thursdays. The action was amazing, which you can read about here, with so many people essentially shutting down the meeting and then 7 people were arrested for blocking the intersection of Michigan and Ottawa near the ICE deployment office.
Over the next 7 months Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE took the following actions in an effort to end the contract with ICE.
- We held dozens of strategy meetings, which always resulted in planning future actions.
- We attended every Kent County Commission Meeting to continue to make our demands, to offer testimony on family separation that was happening by ICE in Kent County and to monitor any comments made by commissioners about the contract.
- Some of the people involved in the campaign met with individual commissioners
- We ran a petition campaign to End the Contract, which we delivered at one of the Commission meetings.
- We held a protest outside of Chairman Saalfeld’s home the night before one of the commission meetings.
- We organized several protests at the Kent County Jail.
- We organized several protest outside of the various ICE offices in downtown Grand Rapids.
- We organized a disruption protest during ArtPrize, on their main stage, drawing attention to family separation in Kent County.
- We created educational materials, which we distributed.
- We created artwork and had sign making parties.
- We spoke to community-based groups about the campaign.
- We utilized social media to education and get the word out about the End the Contract Campaign.
- We held a People’s Commission action during one of the Kent County Commission meetings.
- We worked with the Western Michigan branch of the ACLU and MIRC, who not only obtained their own FOIA documents, but offered their legal expertise on why Kent County was not legally obligated to cooperate with ICE.
In late 2018, an off-duty GRPD Captain, who was also the police department’s ICE liaison, saw on the news a Latino man attempting to start a fire at one of the downtown hospitals. What was really happening is that the person was a former US Marine who was suffering from PTSD after being in Iraq and Afghanistan. The GRPD cop who was the ICE liaison engaged in racially profiling by calling ICE, which led to this story getting national attention.
In January of 2019, the Kent County Sheriff announced that they were requiring ICE to have a judicial warrant to hold immigrants at the Kent County Jail. Both the ACLU and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center representative (Hillary Scholten) that met with Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE felt that this was a sufficient victory and there was no real need for Kent County to end the contract with ICE. Cosecha was not satisfied with this idea, since they didn’t agree with any immigrant being held for ICE at the jail, regardless if there was a judicial warrant or not. Immigrant families were still being separated.
The End the Contract campaign continued with many of the same tactics and strategies, but with an increased effort to pressure the City of Grand Rapids for allowing the GRPD Captain to continue acting as the department’s liaison with ICE with no consequences for the racial profiling he did with the former US Marine Jilmar Ramos Gomez.
Cosecha never revived their demands, they were still demanding an end to the contract and continued to do so until late August of 2019, even holding an action outside of the Kent County Jail just days before ICE decided to not renew the contract with Kent County. You read that correctly…..ICE decided to end the contract, not the Kent County Sheriff nor the Kent County commission, despite what one former County Commission claimed about the end of the ICE contract.
The campaign to end the Kent County contract with ICE took 14 months of planning, strategy and tactics and ICE ended the contract because they were confronted with a public relations problem from all of the negative press.
Cosecha’s campaign to get the City of Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt 6 sanctuary policies
Fast forward to 2025 and Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have once again organized a campaign to get the city and the county to adopt 6 sanctuary policies, policies that will prohibit both governing bodies from collaborating or cooperating with ICE in any way and these policies will effectively reduced the harm that ICE is inflicting on immigrants in Kent County.
The current campaign has also resulted in numerous meetings, strategy sessions and actions, such as:
- Marches
- Actions outside the homes of City and County officials
- Attending City and County Commission meetings
- Disrupting City and County Commission meetings
- Street Theater
- Civil Disobedience
- Education on the 6 sanctuary policies
- Online letters writing
- An organized boycott campaign
- Press Conferences
- Live-streaming of actions
The campaign to get the Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies has already taken longer than the End of the ICE Contract campaign that was begun in 2018. However, the sanctuary policies campaign involves six demands as opposed to just one demand.
Another major difference is the fact that ICE has roughly ten times the amount of money per year than it did in 2018-2019. ICE has increased the number of agents in Grand Rapids and has increased the number of arrests and detentions compared to what was happening when the End the Contract campaign was in full swing. There are also more ICE contracts in Kent County now than there were before.
Despite the challenges that are faced with the current sanctuary policy demands in Grand Rapids and Kent County, both Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE are committed to winning these demands. Movement work always takes time and is never immediate.
If you want to get involved in this important work then you should contact Movimiento Cosecha movimientocosechagr@gmail.com and GR Rapid Response to ICE info@grrapidresponsetoice.org. There is a great deal of work to be done and we need lots of people with lots of passion and skills to get the 6 sanctuary policies adopted. The immigrant justice movement needs all of us!
Tell Michigan Legislators to not provide funds to the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator right now
According to an article from Electronic Intifada, “in November 2025, Michigan activists achieved a significant victory: the State of Michigan Retirement System no longer holds any Israel Bonds.
The decision followed more than a year of organizing by Michigan Divest, a statewide coalition of residents, public employees and human rights advocates who pressured state officials to end pension investments tied to Israel during its genocide in Gaza.”
However, the Michigan legislature wants to include $1 million for the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator (MIBA) in the 2027 state budget. Budget negotiations are happening NOW and could be finalized by July 1st.
This request for MIBA is called a “Legislatively Directed Spending Item” (LDSI). More than 1,000 LDSIs, totaling over $2.6 billion, have been requested. There won’t be votes by all legislators on each of the LDSIs. Rather, decisions about which LDSIs will be included in the budget will be made by legislative leaders behind closed doors. Michigan Divest has identified five legislators as key players in the budget negotiations who need to hear strong opposition to including MIBA in the budget from Michiganders across the state.
You can sign the petition to support the demands of the MI Money Out of MIBA Campaign. The petition is addressed to both the legislature and to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), demanding that they terminate their contract with MIBA and commit not to renew funding or award funding to MIBA in the future.
The Michigan Israel Business Accelerator (MIBA) has only been around since 2017, involving both business representatives and state officials. The Grand Rapids-based group The Right Place Inc. has always had an involvement with this group and still has a seat on the MIBA Board of Directors.
GRIID first noted that the Right Place Inc. assisted an Israeli military company set up shop in West Michigan in 2015, which also led to an activist campaign to expose the Right Place for their role in supporting Israeli Apartheid.
Since Israel began it’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in 2023 GRIID discovered that the Israeli company Plasan North America has been sending military vehicles to Israel for use in the ongoing assault on Palestinians.
The work of groups like the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator and The Right Place Inc. makes them complicit in genocide. Please sign the petition to support the demands of the MI Money Out of MIBA Campaign.
Yesterday on social media I saw a political endorsement that was both confusing and infuriating.
Grand Rapids City Commissioner Lisa Knight wrote a statement endorsing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. The statement reads:
“Abdul El-Sayed embodies a rare, profound love for humanity that shines through every aspect of his leadership. His visionary approach to Michigan’s future does not just anticipate the challenges of tomorrow – it actively builds a more just, healthy, and equitable state where no community is left behind.
I am proud to endorse Abdul because he leads with deep empathy, unwavering integrity, and a bold commitment to elevating the lives of all Michiganders.”
The statement is very nice, positive and upbeat, but it leaves out actually policy proposals from Abdul, such as his position that ICE should be abolished, that he emphatically opposing US military aid and weapons sales to Israel, and he wants to see Medicare for All become a reality.
I say this not so much to champion Abdul, but to make a point about these political position and where Grand Rapids City Commissioner Lisa Knight stands.
The Israeli genocidal campaign being waged against the Palestinians began in October 2023, which was the first year that Commissioner Knight was in office. There were constant calls from the community to get the Grand Rapids City Commission to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Those demanding solidarity with the Palestinians also pressured the City of Grand Rapids on other aspects aspects of the genocide, even pushing for a divestment campaign that the Community Relations Commission endorsed. Commissioner Knight did not support a ceasefire resolution or the divestment effort.
Since January of 2025 Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have demanded that the city of Grand Rapids adopt 6 sanctuary policies, policies that would not allow the city to collaborate or cooperate with ICE. Commissioner Knight has refused to support these demands.
In addition, there have been organized efforts to reduce the amount of money going to the GRPD because of killing of residents by the GRPD. Beginning with Patrick Lyoya, followed by Hank Wymer and more recently Da’Quain Johnson. Commissioner Knight has refused to support the demands for justice around the GRPD killings and broader GRPD practices in mostly Black and Brown neighborhoods.
I found out about this endorsement as it is on Abdul’s Facebook page. Abdul wrote above the endorsement images, “Grateful to earn the endorsement of Grand Rapids City Commissioner Lisa Knight!” Really? My question would be why would Abdul be grateful for Commissioner Knight’s endorsement when they don’t share some of the same stances on major issues?
Another question to ask is, are there people on Abdul’s team in Grand Rapids that aren’t communicating this information about the policy positions that Commissioner Knight has refused to take, positions that are being asked by affected communities, activists and organizers?
Are the people in Grand Rapids who are part of Abdul’s campaign encouraging him to talk with the mother of Da’Quain Johnson or groups like Movimiento Cosecha or GR Rapid Response to ICE, the very people who are on the ground and in the streets doing the hard movement building work?
Candidates should never accept endorsements for endorsement sake, but treat them as a principled measuring stick around the political stances and policy positions they claim to stand for. Accepting endorsements from questionable candidates helps create the lesser of evil kind of political culture that we have to stop participating in.
Politicians who run for higher office often show their real colors when it comes to critical issues of the day.
Take for instance Kent County Commissioner Katie DeBoer. She represents District 4 in Kent County, but is also running to be a State Senator for the 33rd District.
DeBoer, like the rest of the Kent County Commission has been either silent or dismissive of the Cosecha campaign to get Kent County to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies the immigrant-led group has been demanding since the beginning of 2025.
Throughout the past 18 months DeBoer has been one of the commissioners that has remained silent on the sanctuary policy demands, along with not sharing her thoughts on the federal agency known as ICE.
However, now that DeBoer is running for a State Senate seat she has made it clear where she stands on ICE and immigration. Now, you won’t find anything on her campaign page , but she does mention where she stands on undocumented immigrants in a recent political video her campaign created.
At the 20 second mark in her video DeBoer says, “I will deport every criminal illegal immigrant.” The image that shows up in the video is what is included here above. Clearly, Katie DeBoer sees all undocumented immigrants as illegal, and like the current administration wants to deport them all.
Equally instructive is the fact that listed on the endorsements section of her campaign page, in fact second on her page is Michelle LaJoye-Young, Kent County Sheriff. This makes complete sense since Sheriff LaJoye-Young has been collaborating with ICE for years, even before she became sheriff.
After the embarrassment of what happened to Jilmar Ramos Gomez in 2018/2019, Sheriff LaJoye-Young was forced to save face and say that the Sheriff’s office will require ICE to have a judicial warrant if they want someone held at the Kent County Jail. However, as Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have discovered back in 2025, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office is not following their own rule and is holding immigrants in the jail for ICE, where they are eventually transported to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, MI.
In this sense Kent County Commissioner Katie DeBoer and Kent County Sheriff LaJoye-Young are on the same page regarding ICE and immigration policy. They are both in favor of criminalizing and deporting all undocumented immigrants.
Six years ago this week thousands of people were demanding that the City reduced the GRPD budget, and almost won!
There are plenty of people saying that we need the GRPD, or that not all of them are bad, or they have never really invested the time to consider what defunding and abolishing the police would really look like.
The most recent GRPD assault on a young man while sitting in his car and in a driveway because he refused to show any ID should make it clear that the GRPD does what it wants, especially to BIPOC community members.
What many of us have been saying for years it that we need to defund the GRPD and invest in community care. In fact, 6 years ago this week the group Defund the GRPD held it’s first Press Conference and laid out very clear demands.
- The GRPD has a long history of intimidation, harassment and violence against the Black community in Grand Rapids. Those of us who are part of this coalition have experienced this harm and have heard from countless others who have been victimized by the GRPD. There have been numerous efforts to reform the GRPD, but we know it is now time to DeFund the GRPD.
- We are demanding that the City of Grand Rapids hold an emergency meeting by June 30 to adopt a Defunding the GRPD position, wherein the police budget will be reduced to the 32% City Charter mandated level for the upcoming fiscal year.
- We are also demanding that the money from this budget cut should be refunded to the Black community and the Black community should have complete control over how this money will be used.
- DeFunding the GRPD and Refunding Black Communities must happen if there is to be any trust built with the Black community. It is one of the few things that will work to actively promote equity in the Black community, which is so desperately needed.
- The DeFund the GRPD Campaign Coalition believes that there are better ways to practice community safety and that Grand Rapids needs to begin the process of having deep conversation about how to practice community safety that does not rely on policing.
Within a couple of weeks the Defund the GRPD group had generated some 6,000 letters to the Grand Rapids City Commission with these demands. In the summer of 2020, we were in the midst of a pandemic, so there were no in person Grand Rapids City Commission meetings, only virtual ones. However, this did not deter people from showing up online and voicing their support for defunding the GRPD during a public comment period that lasted nearly until midnight.
The Defund the GRPD group, which was led by BIPOC activists also had the support from several grassroots, autonomous community groups such as Together We Are Safe, the Grand Rapids Area Mutual Aid Network, The People’s Budget GR, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE.
On Tuesday, July 7th of 2020, 2nd Ward Commissioner Ysasi proposed to cut the funding to the GRPD by bringing it down to the 1995 City Charter mandated 32% of the budget, which would have reduced the GRPD’s budget by $9 million. Two other Grand Rapids City Commissioners, Joe Jones and Kurt Reppart also endorsed this proposal, but at the last minute the City Attorney had made a ruling after the Committee of the Whole meeting that Tuesday morning, determining that the City Commission could not vote on defunding the GRPD by an additional $9 million.
Now, the public was unaware of the fact that three Grand Rapids City Commissioners were in favor of reducing the GRPD budget by $9 million, since this information was not reported on until Wednesday, July 8th in an MLive article. There were over 100 people who called in to comment on the proposal to defund the GRPD during the City Commission meeting on July 7th, with many more waiting to comment that the city cut off. What is instructive about that meeting was that the City Attorney, the City Manager and Mayor Bliss all knew that the Commission could not vote on this matter, but failed to reveal such information at the beginning of the public meeting. Such a display of subterfuge, once again demonstrated how the City of Grand Rapids is not interested in any meaningful notion of democracy.
Grand Rapids City Manager Mark Washington did say at the time that he thinks it would be better to revisit the proposal later in the year. Mark Washington never brought it up again, although Defund the GRPD and numerous other community-based groups continued to push the issue.
There was plenty of evidence showing that that those who were opposed to defunding the GRPD were scared that such an action could happen. The Grand Rapids Police Officers Association, the GRPD union, released a statement opposing the very idea of defunding the police.
In December of 2020, the Grand Rapids Police Officer’s Association (GRPOA) created an online campaign to undermine any calls for defunding of the GRPD. Just days later an anonymous entity paid for billboards throughout Grand Rapids that opposed defunding the police.
Since the end of 2020, the Grand Rapids Police Union and the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce made it a point to both discredit commissioners who supported any calls to defund the GRPD, plus they provided at least $10,000 to candidates running for Grand Rapids City Commission since.
However, the efforts of Defund the GRPD weren’t limited to demands to get the City to reduce the GRPD budget by $9 million. Some of the same BIPOC organizers involved with Defund the GRPD also pressured the Pride Center to no longer allow the GRPD to have a presence at the annual Pride event, plus the Defund the GRPD and a larger coalition prevented $500,000 in federal funds that the Kent County Commission had that was proposed for the GRPD to purchase technology known as ShotSpotter. This effort was defeated in November of 2020.
I just wanted to share a bit of this recent history to demonstrate that there has been significant public support for defunding the GRPD and that calling for the same thing now is not too idealistic or unreasonable.
Most recent GRPD assault demonstrates once again that we need to invest in community care, not cops
Since the first post I did regarding the selection of Joe Trigg to be the next Chief of Police for Grand Rapids, other police apologist groups have weighed in.
The group known as iCI Nation just reposted the announcement of Trigg’s selection from the City of Grand Rapids’ Facebook page. Ironically, the day before the head of iCI Nation posted a picture which include Joe Trigg a local pastor and herself with the comment, “Blast from the past -Pastor Gholston just sent me this picture from 2019 National Day of prayer of us with now interim Chief Joe Trigg – We have an amazing city!!”
The police apologist group Voice for the Badge also saluted Trigg as the new Police Chief. Their President Johnny Brann Sr. wrote:
CITY OFFICIALS– AS ALWAYS—LET LEADERS LEAD AND SUPPORT THE MEN AND WOMEN IN BLUE -THIS UNFORTUNATELY HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE – JOHNNY BRANN SR
LISTEN TO OUR CHIEF– CHIEF TRIGG WILL BE INTERVIEWED ON THE JUSTIN BARCLAY RADIO {106.9 FM} SHOW AT 930 AM WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24TH.
All of this attention on Trigg as the new GRPD chief has limited news coverage of the most recent GRPD assault, which was caught on video. The video has been making the rounds on social media, thus the GRPD – which hates this kind of exposure – decided to put out the following statement:
GRPD would like to address a video showing a use of force that is circulating online. As with so many videos of this type, everything that happened before the clip and everything that happened after are not shown, so viewers do not have the full context of the interaction.
During this traffic stop, the front seat passenger, an adult male, was not wearing a seatbelt, which is a legal and valid reason to ask for ID. The passenger refused. After multiple refusals, the passenger was ordered out of the car, which was again met with refusal and resistance. After several refusals to exit the vehicle and to identify himself, officers advised the passenger that he was under arrest and performed a trained extraction technique. The passenger continued to resist, bracing his feet against the floor and his hands against the ceiling of the vehicle. He continued to actively resist, bracing himself in the vehicle with his legs and pushing at officers’ hands as they attempted to extract him from the vehicle. Ultimately a palm heel strike was used, which caused the passenger to release the pressure holding him inside the vehicle. The force with which his body exited the vehicle injured an officer, who suffered a broken leg and potential ligament damage. The passenger was medically cleared before being lodged at KCCF. He has since been charged.
There were multiple opportunities for this individual to comply before force was used. GRPD’s policies, including MOP 9-1 De-escalation, Response to Resistance, and Use of Force, are publicly available on GRPD’s website https://www.grandrapidsmi.gov/departments/police-department/ or directly through this link: https://public.powerdms.com/GRANDRAPIDS/tree/documents/89670
Like all uses of force, this incident will be reviewed.
OK, so lets be clear here about this GRPD statement, which is designed to not only to control the narrative about what happened but to dismiss any other interpretation of what happened. With this statement the GRPD is essentially telling the public not to trust what they see, since we apparently don’t have the “full context.” Here is what we do know:
- The person that the GRPD is repeatedly hitting is Afghani.
- The video is happening while the car is parked in a driveway.
- People have the right to remain silent in any and all instances.
- People do not have to produce an ID when asked to do so by the cops.
- The GRPD could have simply asked the person they were assaulting what his name was and run a check before demanding an ID.
- The GRPD could have used other non-force tactics to have a conversation with the person they were assaulting.
- The GRPD could have simply issued a citation and walked away.
But here is the thing. The GRPD hates, like all cops, more than anything else people who do not comply and people who are not obedient. Cops operate under the belief that because they are cops, have a badge, a gun and numerous other weapons on them at all times so the public will simply say yes sir or right away officer. Well guess what, more and more people every day are being non-compliant, they are refusing to obey illegitimate authority, indeed they are being defiant.
The GRPD and all cops will do whatever they want to people who are non-compliant and most of the time they will get away with it. The laws are written to benefit cops, which are nothing more than state carceral violence workers.
The young person who was assaulted in the video will likely be charged with failure to obey an officer, resisting arrest and they might even be charged with assaulting an officer, since one of the GRPD cops was injured during their process of forcibly removing this young man.
As a result there are renewed calls for community forums to talk about policing. Such forums are generally managed events that lead to no clear action apart from some mild reformist bullshit that ends up costing taxpayers even more money.
This is exactly why the Movement for Black Lives has been calling for the defunding and abolition of the police since 2020. This is why groups like Critical Resistance have been calling for the abolition of cops for the last several decades. The police do not really prevent crime or reduce community violence. In fact, policing causes more violence and uses crucial public funds, like the $75.4 million for FY2027. Imagine if $75.4 million annually was going to meet community needs instead of funding the GRPD. We need community care, not cops!
During Tuesday night’s Cosecha action at the Kent County Jail people encountered something that had never happened before for a protest at the jail. The doors leading into the jail where people come for visits or to post bond for people being held at the jail were locked.
When Cosecha organized an End the Contract with ICE campaign back in 2018, they held several rallies in front of the jail and even occupied the main lobby of the jail in 2019.
In January of 2025, Cosecha began a campaign to get the Kent County Commission to adopt 6 sanctuary policies, which has included protests at the Kent County Jail and the Administrative Offices of the Kent County Sheriff in early November and again just days before Thanksgiving.
Then in January of this year five people were arrested at the Kent County Sheriff’s Office to draw attention to the 6 sanctuary policies and the fact that the Kent County Jail is conducted holds at the jail for ICE. A statement released by Cosecha during this action read:
Since 2019, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office has publicly stated that it would only hold immigrants for ICE when presented with a judicial warrant for each individual. However, based on what we are witnessing in our community, we do not believe this policy is being followed. This is why we have protested at the Sheriff’s Office over the past months, and why we risked arrest today. When we asked for a direct answer, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office first instructed us to submit a FOIA request. Later, Sheriff LaJoye-Young refused to answer our question directly, despite being present and having the opportunity to clarify the policy. Instead, we were told that we would need to make an appointment.
The lack of transparency from the Kent County Sheriff’s Office is deeply disappointing, but the greater injustice is its continued cooperation with ICE in the persecution, racial profiling, and detention of immigrant workers in our community.
Tuesday’s action was also meant to draw attention to the 6 sanctuary demands and that the Kent County Sheriff’s Office is directly collaborating with ICE by holding immigrants at the jail for the federal agency. Those being held for ICE at the Kent County Jail are almost always taken to the GEO Group-owned North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, which is the largest ICE detention facility in the midwest.
Those who showed up to the protest at the Kent County Jail on Tuesday also tried to use a side entrance that is used for people who have come to post bond for people in the jail. That door was also locked, so the group decided to walk around the building to the Kent County Sheriff’s Office.
When the small group of protesters arrived to the Kent County Sheriff’s Office it was also locked, but people stayed in front of the building for the next 20 minutes or so. After about 10 minutes several Kent County Sheriff’s cruisers pulled up in front of the building and sat there to see if people were going to do anything. At one point the Sheriff’s officers got out of their vehicles and went in a side door, but left their vehicles running.
These type of actions that are part of the Cosecha campaign to get Kent County to adopt sanctuary policies are a vital part of the resistance against ICE. According to a recent report from the Prison Policy Initiative, “the federal government nonetheless relies heavily on state and local collaboration to enact its mass deportation agenda.” The report goes on to say:
Local jails and police departments are key to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ICE arrests of people who are already in police custody. In the first year of Trump’s second term, the administration has intensified the criminalization of asylum seekers and immigrants, pushed immigrant detention to all-time highs, and indiscriminately raided city after city. Despite all of this, the Trump administration remains well behind their mass deportation goals, in large part due to state and local efforts to protect immigrant communities and limit cooperation with ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies.
If we want to resist ICE then local actions and campaigns like what Movimiento Cosecha are engaged in are critical. Anyone who calls themselves any ally in the fight against ICE in Kent County needs to get involved in the work of Cosecha. Lastly, the Kent County Jail can lock all the doors they want to, but they will never be able to stop this movement for immigrant justice.
Grand Rapids City Manager picks Joe Trigg to be the next Chief of Police, because he is “someone who loves justice?”
It is not surprising that City Manager Mark Washington would chose Joe Trigg to be the next Chief of Police for Grand Rapids.
There were numerous entities that weighed in the choice of Trigg, including the police apologist group Voice for the Badge and the Grand Rapids Businessman page, which has demonstrated over the past year that they love the cops.
The Gerald R. Ford Metro Lodge #97, Fraternal Order of Police also weighed in on the choice, stating on their Facebook page, “We are in great hands. A solid leader who has proven himself worthy of the job. The department and the city of Grand Rapids both win with this selection. Congratulations Chief Trigg!!!”
The City of Grand Rapids released a statement about the new Police Chief, with City Manager Mark Washington stating, “Chief Trigg embodies exactly what our community told us they want in their next police chief — someone who loves justice, who understands that public safety is not achieved by law enforcement alone, but through strong partnerships with the community.”
Washington went on to say:
This is a pivotal moment for policing in Grand Rapids. We need a leader who brings innovative, forward‑thinking approaches to public safety, and who can unite officers, residents and community partners around shared goals. Chief Trigg has shown he can do that. His experience, his compassion and his commitment to justice make him the right person to guide the department into its next chapter.
I agree with City Manager Washington that this is a pivotal moment for Grand Rapids, but for entirely different reasons. The GRPD has always been a repressive institution, but in recent years residents of Grand Rapids have taken their mistrust in the GRPD in the form of organized resistance. Beginning around 2015 and ensuing years Black children were stopped at gunpoint by GRPD cops, then it was how the GRPD handled the George Floyd protests in 2020, followed by the police murder of Patrick Lyoya, Hank Wymer in late 2024 and the most recent GRPD shooting of Da’Quain Johnson in February.
- Joe Trigg has been part of the GRPD through all of this, which means that he has been supportive of and complicit in the GRPD’s practice of:
- Brutalizing Black and Brown residents
- Harassing and intimidating Black and Brown residents
- Adopting a similar PR role to that of Chief Eric Winstrom. Winstrom spoke highly of Joe Trigg, which should also be a concern for people who haven’t bought into the GRPD copaganda.
- Ongoing GRPD cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
- Trigg’s role as Deputy Chief of Police to endorse the County Prosecutor’s decision to not re-charge and try Christopher Schurr for shooting Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head.
- Joe Trigg’s role in the copaganda TV series All Access GRPD, which was a scripted show that made the GRPD out to be saviors of the community.
- Trigg’s role with criminalizing activists and organizers in Grand Rapids.
However, while the selection of Trigg to lead the Grand Rapids Police Department is getting headlines, what we need to understand is that the GRPD, like any police department is an institution that operates out of power, with the constant threat of using deadly force, specifically for the purpose of protecting power and maintaining business as usual.
As Andrea Ritchie and Mariame Kaba say in their book, No More Police: A Case for Abolition:
We want folks to come away with the understanding that police are not producing safety. They are not preventing or interrupting violence. They’re not healing and transforming people from violence. More than half of survivors of violence don’t even turn to the system for help, because of the harms of policing and it doesn’t meet their needs. And police are perpetrating and perpetuating violence, including by stealing all the resources that we need to actually create increased wellbeing in our communities through meeting material needs and having skills ourselves to intervene in and de-escalate and address conflict, and to hold each other accountable.
Don’t be fooled or lulled into complacency by the decision of the non-elected City Manager to make Joe Trigg the new GRPD Chief. Instead, continue to be vigilant and join in the fight to defund and abolish the GRPD.
There is a new meme on social media, which has a picture of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, all of them with their spouses.
The text on the meme reads: Great photo of Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden with the Obamas, Bushes and Clintons in Chicago today. This is America! Not what is currently in the White House.
The meme originates from @AMONEYRESISTS, also known as Andrew-#IAmTheResistance, who I would identify as a liberal and most likely a Democrat, which certainly explains a great deal about this particular meme.
Before deconstructing the content of this meme, it is important to note that this picture was taken at the grand opening of the Obama Center. I would also suggest that people read the article on Black Agenda Report entitled, The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil. This article is a good introduction to my post.
Before I begin I want to acknowledge that the current iteration of the Trump Administration is oppressive, vile, corrupt and repressive in so many aspects. The Trump administration has started a war, it uses ICE to terrorize immigrants, it used public policy that has private benefits for the wealthy, it punishes poor families and has no tolerance for public criticism.
I think it is also important to state up front that the people pictured in this meme are also individuals who continue to carry tremendous privilege, will never have to worry about their needs being met, get full time protection and charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements.
The rest of this post is not about the individuals, rather it is about what happened during their respective administrations. This post is not about their speaking ability, their fashion sense or their family life, rather it is about the policies that were adopted during each of their administrations.
I personally could care less about how former presidents carry themselves or how much they find each other agreeable, since none of that really matters when it comes to what kind of policies their administrations adopted, which means how those policies impacted people, particularly those most vulnerable in this country.
Clinton Administration – According to the Economic Policy Institute 43,600 jobs had been lost or displaced in Michigan – and about 700,000 in the United States – due to the rise in the trade deficit with Mexico alone since NAFTA was enacted in 1994.
During the Clinton Presidency there was a growing movement against globalization that culminated in the WTO protest in Seattle in 1999, along with the growing militant environmental movement. In addition, the prison industrial complex grew during the Clinton years, where Black and Brown people were disproportionately incarcerated, which was complimented by the 1994 Crime Bill (which increased police funding) and the 1996 bill Clinton signed that fundamentally ended welfare.
Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Act of 1995: Proposed by the Clinton administration in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, this bill sought to establish broader federal jurisdiction over international and domestic terrorism. While some early wiretapping expansions were rejected by Congress at the time, many of the core concepts for tracking terrorists were later incorporated into the 2001 PATRIOT Act.
On the foreign policy front, Clinton continued to provide billions to Israel, maintain the economic blockage against Cuba, began the expansion of NATO, sent the US military to Haiti, bombed Sudan and the former Yugoslavia, attacked Somalia, and bombed Iraq regularly, along with imposing economic sanctions on Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. 60 minutes reporter Lesley Stahl asked, “We have heard that a half a million children have died… That’s more than died in Hiroshima. And… is the price worth it?” Albright responded: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it”.
George W. Bush Administration – after 9/11, 2001, the Bush Administration used the so-called war on terror to engage in state terrorism, bombing Afghanistan and occupying it for more than two decades, despite the fact that Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11, 2001. Then in 2003, under false pretenses, the US invaded Iraq, killed more than 1 million people, including Saddam Hussein, re-wrote Iraq government policy and secured Iraqi oil for the global oil cartels. See the book, War Without End: The Iraq War in Context, by Michael Schwartz.
The Bush Administration continued to provide billions in military aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia, continued the economic blockade on Cuba, continued to demonize Iran, expanded US military bases in Colombia and promoted economic and political warfare against Venezuela.
On the domestic side the Bush Administration, with Congressional approval, adopted the USA Patriot Act, which gave power to the federal government to increase domestic surveillance, to lock up people of Arab descent or those who identified as Muslims, and criminalized dissent, even non-violent protests. Under the Bush Administration the Department of Homeland Security was created, which also included the creation of Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement (ICE), which was designed to criminalize and terrorize immigrants.
Lastly, the cost of the Bush Administration’s so-called War on Terror meant that domestic spending was cut significantly, thus widening the wealth gap and seeing more and more people subject to poverty.
Obama Administration – The Obama Administration authorized over 540 drone strikes in countries including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process. His administration continued massive US military aid to Israel, was complicit in the coup in Honduras, increased US troop numbers in Afghanistan, conducted war in Libya and created the US military command post in Africa known as AFRICOM.
The Obama Administration invoked the Espionage Act more than all his predecessors combined. Who did he target? Heroic whistleblowers like Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. He used it as a pretext to target reporters such as James Rosen, Wikileaks and the Associated Press.
The Obama Administration authorized Shell to conduct limited exploratory oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska in 2015. He consistently bragged in interviews he made America the oil producing nation of the world.
The Obama Administration signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. Under this provision, the executive branch has the authority to detain Americans indefinitely. The Obama administration tried to assuage the fears of Americans by telling them they never intended to use this provision. I am sure it was a coincidence after the provision was signed into law, Obama violated his campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay.
After the 2008 economic crash the Obama Administration bailed out Wall Street not main street, plus he never adopted Comprehensive Immigration Reform, even when the Democrats controlled Congress. Police killings of civilians, particularly Black civilians, increased during his administration as did the wealth gap. It is no surprise that the Movement for Black Lives and Occupy Wall Street were both created during the Obama Administration.
Biden Administration – The Biden Administration increased the US military budget to nearly $1 trillion, maintained the economic blockade against Cuba, continued efforts to undermine Venezuela, provided billions in military aid to the Ukraine after the Russian invasion and provided more military aid to Israel than any previous US President and this was after Israel began their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in 2023.
The Biden Administration continued many of the same anti-immigration practices than begun under the Trump Administration, plus the Biden Administration deported several million undocumented immigrants.
Despite the Movement for Black Lives calling for the defunding of policing, the Biden Administration increased federal funding for policing. The number of civilians killed by policy went up every year during the Biden Administration, averaging over 1200 per year.
The Biden Administration did not impose taxes on Billionaires or millionaires, the cost of rent nationally increased during the Biden years as did the cost of owning a home. The Biden Administration did not increased the federal minimum wage or eliminate student debt, which were both promises he made while campaigning in 2020. Lastly, the Biden Administration criminalized the student-led anti-genocide protests across the US, choosing instead to label student protests and a form of anti-semitism.
The items listed under each administration was just a sampling of the harm that was done during each of their administrations, both domestically and around the world. This level of harm demonstrates how the above meme sanitizes previous administrations while demonizing the current Trump Administration.
Each of the previous administrations included here started wars, had massive military budgets, detained and deported millions of immigrants, saw an increase in the wealth gap, did not get us any closer to reducing greenhouse gases, we didn’t see a reduction in mass incarceration, nor a reduction in poverty for working families.
All of the four administrations listed above embraced neoliberal economic policies that were devastating to working class families and provide more benefits to members of the capitalist class. One could argue that things are worse under the current Trump Administration, but saying things were better under previous administrations is disingenuous and it denies the real harm that those administration perpetrated domestically and internationally.
Comparing administrations is not a contest, rather we should all be providing honest and critical assessments of each administration in regards to the harm they caused and their failures to deliver on campaign promises. In fact, I would argue, as many other left writers do, that the Trump Administration has been able to achieve the level of repression and structural inequality precisely because of the policies of the previous administrations, many of which paved the way for what the Trump Administration is doing.
It is a dangerous game to play when we yearn for the days of George W. Bush, where Wall Street wrecked havoc on working people, further criminalized dissent and killed over 1 million Iraqi citizens. It is a dangerous game to play when people yearn for a recent Democratic President, especially since the wealth gap continued to grow, where mass incarceration was high, where police violence, institutionalized racism and the arrest, detention and deportation of millions of immigrants was normalized.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 