Join the Communities Not Cages campaign to shut down ICE Detention Centers across the county and in Michigan

On July 4th, No Detention Centers in Michigan (NDCM) kicked off their campaign to shut down the Geo Group Inc. run Ice detention facility in Baldwin, Michigan, known as the North Lake Detention Center.

On Wednesday, the national group Detention Watch Network, sent out a Press Release, which included the following comments about their Communities Not Cages campaign:

Communities Not Cages is amplifying local community organizing to end ICE detention while illuminating the dangers of the Trump administration’s multi-layered detention expansion plan. Campaign organizers underscore that the gravity of this moment cannot be understated, particularly after the passage of the MAGA megabill that will supercharge Trump’s cruel mass detention and deportation agenda, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Shockingly, ICE’s budget now exceeds many militaries around the world. 

The bill provides an appalling $150 billion for the targeting, detention, and deportation of people including $45 billion for ICE detention to detain families and adults over the next four years. This bill is 13 times ICE’s current fiscal budget which is already operating at a historic high, and will be in addition to ICE’s annual budget that Congress green lights each year. 

A representative from No Detention Centers in Michigan was also quoted in the Press Release, stating: 

“As the federal government continues its assault on immigrants across Michigan and around the country, we hear from more people every day who are shocked to learn that Baldwin is now home to the largest detention center in the Midwest. We know that as this awareness spreads, opposition to ICE and the GEO Group will only continue to grow. When North Lake was last open five years ago, and conditions inside led to multiple hunger strikes, one person held there told us: ‘They don’t want nobody to know what’s going on over here—they want to keep it under the rug.’ The GEO Group keeps these things under the rug as much as they can, but the truth is that this facility has been shut down before, and it will be shut down again. We stand with campaigns around the country and beyond in looking toward a future where everyone’s needs are met, freedom of movement is respected, and the immigration detention system that allows the GEO Group to profit from fear and racist sadism no longer exists.”

Last month I posted an article about the recent ICE raid at the ISAP office in Grand Rapids. That office is managed by the group BI Incorporated, which is a subsidiary of the GEO Group. This means that immigrants who go to ICE appointments at that office are at risk of being taken by ICE and would likely be sent to the North Lake Detention Center, which is also owned by the GEO Group. The GEO Group has a near monopoly on immigration monitoring and detention in the western part of Michigan.

The fact is that the US Government maintains the world’s largest immigration detention system and the North Lake Detention Center is the largest in the midwest. You can see where the ICE detention centers are located throughout the US by going to this newly create detention center map that Detention Watch Network recently created. In addition, the Detention Watch Network has created a useful toolkit for those wanting to organize a Communities Not Cages campaign in their own community.

For people in Michigan, it is important that we join the campaign to shut down the GEO Group’s ICE detention facility in North Lake. Follow No Detention Centers in Michigan on Facebook to stay informed about updates and actions in the campaign to shut down that facility. When the North Lake Facility was a prison, No Detention Centers in Michigan was able to get it shut down, which means we can collectively do it again.