Grand Rapids and Kent County officials go out of their way to say they are cooperating with ICE, while MLive omits the organizations pushing for Sanctuary policies

On Thursday, MLive posted an article entitled, Grand Rapids, Kent County ICE policies facing scrutiny after funding cut threat.

The premise of the article centers around the fact that Michigan Republican legislators proposed a resolution, which has now been adopted, that will threaten state funding if cities, counties and other public institutions – like universities – adopt any sort of Sanctuary policy. The resolution states in part:

An appropriations bill or conference report shall not be brought for a vote if it contains a legislatively directed spending item for which the intended recipient is a municipality or a university, including any official, department, or board of a municipality or university, that actively maintains any rule, policy, ordinance, or resolution that would subvert immigration enforcement in any way or that refuses to comply with federal immigration enforcement measures.

The MLive article cites four different sources in this article – Grand Rapids City Manager Mark Washington, GRPD Chief Eric Winstrom, Sgt. Scott Dietrich with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young. All four of these local officials really, really want us to know that they are cooperating ICE, and in no way want to be seen as “subverting immigration enforcement.” 

The only non-governmental source cited in the article is the Center for Immigration Studies, which not only provides false information to MLive, they are actually an anti-immigration group, that “the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has “been part of a broad-based and well-planned effort to attack immigration in all forms,” according to Source Watch.

What we don’t see in the MLive article are comments from Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE, the two groups that have been pushing the City of Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt Sanctuary policies. How is it that MLive can omit the very entities that are demanding that City and County officials take action to defend immigrants against the federal government’s threat of mass deportation?

It is instructive to note that whenever Movimiento Cosecha or GR Rapid Response to ICE are cited in local news stories, the local news agencies always include comments from government officials in order to show “balance” in those news stories. However, when government officials are cited, the local news doesn’t come to these community-based entities and get responses from them about what the government is or isn’t doing that impacts the affected communities. 

It’s all about the money and the threat of it being taken away

The threat of withholding funding by the Federal or State governments for local communities that are taking a stand against unjust policies has been happening for decades.  Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have been told by plenty of white liberals during meetings they have held over the past few months, things like, “if we declared ourselves a Sanctuary City, it’s like putting a target on our back” or “the funds that would be withheld will disproportionately impact resources for vulnerable communities.”

First, let us be very clear that when the Federal or State government threatens to withhold funding, it is primarily a way to get people to fall in line and not threatened business as usual. When people, communities and movements are pushing for greater equity, for protection of the most vulnerable, or challenging unjust laws and policies, they do so to push what Dr. King said just days before he was assassinated, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Second, people who are part of affected communities, those that are BIPOC, queer and and immigrants, already have a target on their backs from government policies and practices. People with courage and a commitment to justice and collective liberation don’t shy away from systems of power and oppression, they stand up and fight. People who make the claim that we should be quiet and not call for Sanctuary policies are primarily people who carry a great deal of privilege and are unlikely to have any target on their backs. 

The goal of any social movement or movements of collective liberation should be to challenge, question, confront and dismantle systems of power and oppression. Of course this work isn’t easy or without risk. In fact, we should get used to taking risks, because that is what is what fighting for justice looks like.