Here’s an idea, let’s propose legislation that will not stop ICE from terrorizing immigrants

Last week MLive ran an article with the headline, Michigan considers banning ICE agents from churches, schools.

The MLive article was referring to Senate Bills 508, 509, and 510, even though the reporter failed to name the bills or provide links so that people could actually read the proposed legislation.

Senate Bill 508 claims to want to limit where ICE agents can go to apprehend immigrants, such as schools, places of worship, hospitals, libraries, etc. However, Senate Bill 508 also includes language that says:

A law enforcement officer may conduct an immigration enforcement action in a sensitive location if a court order directs the law enforcement officer conducting the immigration enforcement action to enter the sensitive location. A law enforcement officer may conduct an immigration enforcement action in a sensitive location if the immigration enforcement action is necessary to address a threat that poses imminent danger to public safety.

Senate Bill 509 would bar state and local police from providing identifying information to ICE of people they have detained or arrested, unless obligated by a warrant issued by a federal court or a court of this state.

Senate Bill 510 has language that want to make sure ICE agents are not covering their faces. Well, that is the intent, but there are 3 exceptions provided in the language of the bill. If an ICE agent covers their face for reasons other than the three exceptions they could be guilty of a misdemeanor.

It seems to me that the headline in the MLive article is misleading. The headline should have stated that Michigan considers banning ICE from some places, unless they have a judicial warrant or something like, we propose legislation that will not stop ICE from terrorizing immigrants.

What Michigan Senate Democrats are proposing in these three bills are ultimately meaningless since they will do nothing to concretely limit the terrorism being inflicted by ICE against undocumented immigrants. In each of these three pieces of legislation there are exceptions, meaning that if ICE agents have judicial warrants then they can arrests and detain whoever they want and where ever they want, whether they are masked or not.

Do people not see the ridiculousness of these bills? ICE is terrorizing undocumented immigrants, separating families, causing tremendous trauma, economic hardship and putting more money into the hands of private companies that are profiting off of the terrorism and kidnapping by ICE, like the GEO Group, which now runs the largest ICE Detention facility in the Midwest at the North Lake facility in Baldwin, MI.

You can’t claim to want to lessen the harm being inflicted by ICE, when in all three of these bills you provide ICE with exceptions, with language that allows them to still do whatever they want.

Do people not see that at this moment in Michigan and around the country that the only meaningful legislation that politicians could put forth and should put forth would be to Abolish ICE, to dismantle ICE, to Defund ICE.

Now, there are no politicians, local, state or federal, who are proposing that ICE be abolished. This means that politicians believe that ICE is a legitimate entity that has had a legitimate purpose since they were founded in 2003. But let’s be clear, since 2003, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been designed to terrorize undocumented immigrants, to kidnap them, to detain them and to deport them. ICE has not and does not promote public safety.

We have to see these kinds of proposed bills as ineffectual justifications for state carceral violence and not spend one once of energy trying to convince ourselves that Michigan Senate Bills 508, 509 and 510 will be better for undocumented immigrants. Abolishing ICE is the only meaningful thing to do, if you genuinely want to be in solidarity with immigrants.

Abolishing ICE is what Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE are calling for, so instead of supporting bullshit legislation just get involved with the work they are doing.