Who are you going to believe, a politician running for office or a people’s history of what happened on the ground in Kent County regarding the ICE contract?

It is always instructive to see how people in positions of power craft narratives in ways that benefits them. In a recent post on Facebook, State Rep. Phil Skaggs, who is running to become a State Senator, wrote the following narrative about what happened 6 years ago regarding the ICE contract that Kent County had, while Skaggs was a County Commissioner.

I will include comments and hyperlinks to GRIID articles that provides a counter-narrative to what Skaggs wants us to believe that will be in black. Here is a link to a People’s History of the End the Contract with ICE campaign, which provides an overview of all the things this campaign included.

Also, before reading the narrative, Skaggs also included the following image of Dr. King and a quote from him, including a picture of Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young, thus equating her as modeling King’s comment, which I find rather insulting. Also, make sure you read Cosecha’s response to the post from Skaggs, which is at the very end.

Six years ago today, Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young announced a new policy to no longer honor federal immigration holds (Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers) without an arrest warrant signed by a federal judge. The new policy meant that the county jail would not hold people past their legal stay (the end of their sentence or release on bail) on local charges if ICE was not able to provide a valid judicial warrant. (The reason why the Sheriff made this decision was largely due the tremendous pressure that Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE had been putting on Kent County officials and the Sheriff that began in June of 2018.) 

The move effectively ended the Sheriff’s 287(g) Agreement (“Contract”) with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that had been in place since renew. It became national news. This wasn’t a deep-Blue county, Kent County had a Republican sheriff and a Republican majority on the County Commission.

But, there is much more to the story. I’ve been reluctant to tell that entire story because it might inadvertently harm colleagues and limit opportunities to effectively cooperate on future issues. But, time has passed and, while the issue has gotten far worse, I think it’s a moment when it’s prudent to write what I saw and did. It isn’t the full story, that would take a fuller investigation by a journalist or historian, but I think it adds some information to this important reform.

The change in policy was sparked by the circumstances around the detention of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez. Ramos-Gomez, a United States citizen and Marine Corps veteran was wrongfully turned over by the Kent County Sheriff to ICE for deportation proceedings and was sent by ICE to the detention facility in Battle Creek. Ramos-Gomez, who suffered from PTSD as a result of his military service in Afghanistan, was arrested by the Grand Rapids police in 2018 after trespassing at a local hospital. Curt VanderKooi – an off-duty GR police captain – learned about Ramos-Gomez from a local news story and asked ICE to check his “status,” despite having no reason to think he was undocumented other than his name and appearance (I’m leaving out the entire GRPD part of the story, but it too led to policy changes after some really bad actions were uncovered) . Based on this tip, ICE issued a non-judicial immigration detainer request for Ramos-Gomez, resulting in the Kent County Jail placing him in federal custody. We’ll pick that story up later, but now is the time to place it in the context of the time. (Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were working directly with the ACLU and MIRC on the Jilmar Ramos-Gomez case, which you can read here.  In addition Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were pressuring the Grand Rapids City Commission to fire GRPD Captain VanderKooi for engaging in racial profiling and calling ICE. I also wrote a story about the history that GRPD Captain VanderKooi had with ICE. VanderKooi was exonerated for any wrong doing, but then in May of 2019, the Grand Rapids Civilian Appeals Board reversed that decision on the grounds that VanderKooi engaged in racial profiling.)

About six months earlier, beginning on 28 June 2018 (narrative of what actually happened), Movimiento Cosecha began protesting at County Commission meetings, calling on us commissioners to end the contract with ICE. While Cosecha did succeed in dramatically bringing the issue to the public, their disruptive tactics alienated the majority of commissioners, especially Republican leadership. (When people who are directly affected by ICE terrorism aren’t taken seriously, they will use disruptive tactics to demonstrate the urgency of what they are facing. To the degree that County Commissioners were alienated, was a demonstration that they didn’t care that immigrant families were being separated. Here is an example of how the End the Contract campaign confronted County officials.)  In addition, there belief that the commission could end the contract was legally mistaken. The elected Sheriff was the only official with authority. Still, those of us sympathetic to the issue began to work to see if we could accomplish the goals of the protest from behind the scenes. But, we ran into several obstacles. (Skaggs also leaves out important context here, especially about he behaved towards Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE members. Almost all of the Democrats on the County Commission fought the movement to end the contract. Skaggs in particular engaged in gaslighting of some of the latinx organizers and made no public effort to support our demands or work to End the Contract even after more than a year of demanding they work to end the contract. Skaggs even mocked the very organizers of the End the Contract Campaign, often referring to what we were doing as Bolshevik cosplay.)

First, the sheriff at the time was Larry Stelma, a hardliner on immigration who had signed onto a March 2018 letter from the National Sheriff’s Association which took a hardline in support of cracking down on undocumented immigrants in the American interior. There would be no opportunity at all to convince Stelma to exit a contract he had initially signed in 2012 and extended in 2017. However, among the Democrats on the Commission, it was well known that the 70-year old Stelma was on the verge of retirement and that Michelle LaJoye-Young was the likely successor. A strategy was devised to wait for Stelma’s retirement (which was announced in August and effective in November 2018) and try to lower the temperature in order to avoid a backlash that might lead Stelma or the Republican-dominated appointment committee to skip over LaJoye-Young and pick an immigration hardliner. The plan worked. LaJoye-Young was indeed appointed Sheriff in September 2018. Obstacle overcome. (Saying their plan worked is misleading. First, while the Democrats on the County Commission were buying time til Stelma retired immigrant families were being separated over and over again. Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young was not an improvement, since the same wealthy families that funded Stelma also continued to fund LaJoye-Young.

Second, the Chair of the Commission was still Jim Saalfeld, who was resolutely against Cosecha and, in control of the agenda, he was not going to allow any attempt to make an official call on the sheriff to end the special relationship with ICE. Thankfully, his term would end at in December 2019. Being the Vice Chair, it was widely known that Mandy Bolter would almost certainly be elected by the Republican caucus and then the full Kent County Commission to be the new Chair. Bolter was indeed nominated by her caucus in December 2018 and elected Chair at the 5 January 2019 board meeting. Obstacle overcome. (Just because the Republicans had the majority of the county seats during this campaign doesn’t excuse the Democrats for remaining silent, being antagonistic towards organizers, since they could have applied public pressure to the Sheriff and to the Commission chair to make ending the ICE contract a priority.)

Third, the County attorney was very clear with the Commission that we had absolutely no power to effect change. We could neither order the sheriff to change policy nor reduce the departmental budget in an attempt to leverage change (there was clear precedent of sheriffs successfully suing commissions that tried to use their budgetary power in an attempt to change policy). (This is the same bullshit answer that Kent County officials are using right now regarding the 6 sanctuary policies that Cosecha is demanding.) It’s extremely difficult to get a majority of a part-time commission to go against their in-house attorney (someday I’ll tell you about how I had to continually push to get Kent County to join the national opioid  lawsuit until finally succeeding).  In addition, the County had received a letter from the Trump administration threatening to withhold any and all funding from counties that did not “cooperate with ICE.” We had to take these threats seriously and consider the consequences for vulnerable members of our community if federal grants and funds were cut off for programs from rent and utility assistance to behavioral health supports. (Just more excuses instead of listening to members of the affected community and joining them is creating enough public pressure to end abusive policies and contracts.)

At this point, many commissioners were growing increasingly frustrated. We wanted to bring change, but we were dealing with a largely hostile Republican majority, a protest movement which was not interested engaging in strategic dialogues and which was demanding illegal actions from us, staff that was giving us legal advice that made reform impossible, and a Trump administration that was threatening important programs. (Much of what Skaggs is saying her is simply false, especially what he is saying about “the protest movement”. It was and is an immigrant justice movement and many of the members have conversations with County Commissioners, but those conversations always ended with them saying there was nothing they could do.)

At this point, I reached out to attorneys with the ACLU and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) who I knew personally. (Wow, he knew them personally. The fact is both the ACLU and MIRC were working with us from the very beginning and often accompanied us during commission meetings and speaking at those meetings saying that the county was under NO legal obligation to cooperate with ICE.) Those subsequent conversations changed everything. The attorneys were able to give us the legal arguments we needed to take to our colleagues to convince them there were legal viewpoints different from what our corporate counsel that allowed the sheriff to take action. Having built some consensus within the Democratic caucus, we went to the new sheriff in an attempt to convince her to end the contract (I had several three-ring binders full of court rulings, legal arguments and media stories on how other communities were working on the issue of disentangling themselves from ICE so they could concentrate on policing their community effectively – knowing me, there probably still down in the basement somewhere). By December, we had strong confidence that the sheriff would let the Contract with ICE lapse without renewal when it expired about a year later, on 30 September 2019. (Skaggs is claiming that the Sheriff’s office would not renew the contract, when in fact ICE chose not to renew it, which is exactly what Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young stated during a press conference in August of 2019. Her quote was, “The current contract with ICE will expire on September 30, 2019 as ICE is not seeking to renew the agreement.”)

Because Republicans had a majority on the County Commission and their caucus was increasingly MAGA, letting the contract lapse was considered the only feasible way to end the sheriff’s special relationship with ICE. No one liked having to wait, but one has to understand constellation of forces (allow me to invoke one of my mantras – “election have consequences”). This opened us up to some painful criticism from some in the activist community, but we were determined to focus on the impacted community as a whole, especially protecting people from deportation because of minor infractions and ending cooperation with ICE that went beyond what was legally required. (Here Skaggs wants to show he was focus on the impacted community, yet the impacted community and allies had been telling him what changes they wanted and he made fund of them. When Skaggs says he wanted to make sure that minor infractions didn’t lead to deportation, this was also completely false. There is no evidence that he did a damn thing to benefit the immigrant communities that were being targeted by ICE while he was a County Commissioner, just like he and his fellow Democrats in 2024 failed to pass driver’s licenses for all. 

Then, the event happened which significantly sped up the timeline. Ramos-Gomez was arrested on 21 November 2018 and handed over to ICE on 14 December (he was held in jail beyond his court-ordered release date because of an ICE detainer, despite GR police knowing he held a valid US passport). Ramos-Gomez’s mother hired a lawyer, gave ICE documentation that her son was a US citizen, and Jilmar was released on 17 December. Soon thereafter, the events came to my attention and shortly after that it went public, quickly gaining national attention.

Immediately, I reached out to Commission leadership and the Sheriff and there began a series of seemingly endless phone calls that ended in agreement that the sheriff should seize on the incompetence of ICE on the case and announce that she could no longer in good conscience trust ICE detainer holds and would stop accepting them. (It wasn’t so much the incompetence of ICE in the Jilmar Ramos-Gomez case, but the racial profiling of the GRPD that land him in jail.)  At that point, a meeting was held and all Democratic members of the caucus supported the plan and were willing to publicly support the sheriff when she would make her policy change public. I then believed that it was wise to go public with a statement calling on the sheriff to “no longer blindly honor [ICE’s] non-judicial detainer requests” and “terminate the Agreement between the Kent County Sheriff’s Office and ICE.” It was all in the Sheriff’s hands, but we were confident she would do the right thing. (While Skaggs wants to take credit for what happened here, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE were the ones that made this issue public and spent 14 months pressuring the county and the sheriff to end the contract and end ICE holds.

Concurrent with these talks and public demands, the ACLU and MIRC went public with the legal arguments they had been sharing with us privately. In a 16 January 2019 letter, they pointed out that immigration detainers are optional requests not mandatory arrest warrants signed by a judge, that nothing in Michigan law or the Sheriff’s oath of office required compliance with these administrative, non-judicial holds, and that it had become clear to all in during the Ramos-Gomez case that blindly following ICE detainers was a “recipe for disaster” due to ICE’s error-prone data. Cosecha too revived their demands to end the Contract. Everything was lining up. (Cosecha never revived their demands, they were still demanding an end to the contract and continued to do so until 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.) 

A few days after the meetings and letter, the Sheriff made her statement that effectively ended the Contract by making moot the core part of the agreement – that ICE would pay the jail for the costs of detaining individuals for up to three days beyond their release date.

Immediately, ICE and the Trump White House criticized the Sheriff for promulgating what they called a “sanctuary” policy which they said threatened public safety by not holding immigrants for ICE beyond their release date without a judicial warrant so agents could pick them up and begin the deportation process. However, the Sheriff stood firm in her defense of due process. Nine months later, with little fanfare, the Contract officially lapsed on 30 September 2019, though it had been inactive since that January. (We were still pressuring, which didn’t go unnoticed by ICE, but Skaggs likes to make it about him)

It was a long process, but it effectuated real change for families in West Michigan.

Looking back, I’m filled with gratitude to the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and ACLU of Michigan for getting us the legal information we needed to make our case, to Cosecha who brought the issue forward and relentlessly urged action, to the individuals came to the meetings to tell us their stories, to my colleagues on the County Commission (especially Commission leadership) who each in their own way moved us toward a better policy, and to many others who helped make the success possible. And, of course, special thanks to Sheriff LaJoye-Young for her bravery and leadership.

Epilogues: I recently spoke with former attorneys for Ramos-Gomez and they tell me his mental health has dramatically improved since the difficult times he faced in 2018-2019. I was relieved to hear the news and wish him and his family all the best.

(Again, Skaggs wants to come across as an ally saying thanks to Cosecha, but we know how he treated them during this whole campaign. Interesting that the Sheriff gets to “special thanks” in his comments, which is why he equated the Sheriff with Dr. King instead of Cosecha organizers.

Of course, unfortunately, Trump is back in the White House and his administration (and Speaker Matt Hall) continues to malign Kent County, so many continue to fear punishment from Washington. We’ve seen Trump and ICE punish those they see as political opponents (of even just those that don’t fall in line) in Minneapolis. We all must remain vigilant to prevent such an invasion from coming to our door step. And we must continue to do all we can to stop family separation, racial profiling, the deportation of peaceful people, the attacks on due process for non-citizens and citizens alike, and the violence we’ve seen from an out-of-control agency. You can count on me to do my best and my part to fight back, defend peaceful families, and protect our Constitution. (Here Skaggs make it all about Trump and lets the Democrats off the hook. Skaggs says nothing about the fact that his hero Sheriff LaJoye-Young is again cooperating with ICE and engaging in ICE holds.

Movimiento Cosecha responded to the FB post from Skaggs with these parting comments:

No matter who is in the White House, immigrant families have been separated. Since ICE was created in 2003, the agency has expanded its harm through cooperation with local authorities.

Since the beginning of 2025, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE /Respuesta Rápida al ICE have put forward six clear demands to end city and county cooperation with ICE and to stop ICE holds at the Kent County Jail. Every local elected official has dismissed these demands, offering excuses that they “don’t control immigration law.” Our demands do not involve enforcing or changing federal immigration law—they are about local accountability and local choices.

We’ve seen this before. In 2018, when we demanded an “end to the ICE contract”, county commissioners including yourself Phil Skaggs were just as dismissive.

The Kent County Jail continues to carry out ICE holds without judicial warrants. This Sunday morning, a DACA recipient was taken to Kent County Jail during a traffic stop and placed on an ICE hold.