Don’t expect much from the performative letter and visit from Rep. Scholten and Stevens regarding the GEO Group-owned Northlake ICE Detention Facility

On Tuesday, WOODTV8 posted a story with the headline, Congresswomen Scholten, Stevens tour ICE facility following detainee death.

The channel story states:

U.S. Reps. Hillary Scholten, D-Grand Rapids, and Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, toured the North Lake Processing Center in Lake County after asking several questions in the December death of Nenko Gantchev.

Most of the rest of the WOODTV8 story is based on what the GEO Group-owned Northlake facility people have said, along with what Representatives Scholten and Stevens said. None of that information is terribly revealing nor compelling in terms of shedding light on the conditions of the Northlake facility, plus much of the back and forth has to do with the case of the Bulgarian detainee who died there last year.

However, WOODTV8 does include a link to a letter that Scholten and Stevens sent to the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on December 23, 2025. Much of the letter is specific to death of Nenko Gantchev, but towards the end the letter states the following:

Additionally, given the ongoing reports regarding the treatment of detainees and conditions of accommodations at North Lake, we also request an investigation into the current conditions at the facility. The review should address, at a minimum, the following:

1. How is ICE fulfilling the required medical screening, care, and supervision of any medical needs of detainees at North Lake, especially in light of the rapid population increase at the facility since reopening? Please provide a description of the current and future expected staffing of medical professionals to fulfill such required medical care.
2. Please provide a copy of all policies and procedures for medical screening and response currently in place.
3. Please provide the number of detainees currently being housed at North Lake who have lodged a complaint or request pertaining to medical care.
4. How is ICE meeting requirements related to mandatory basic need care, including safe accommodations, at North Lake, especially in light of the rapid population increase at the facility since reopening? Please provide a description of the current and future expected staffing of required professionals to fulfill such functions.
5. Has ICE investigated any complaints regarding the conditions at North Lake? If so, how many? Please provide a detailed description of the complaints received, the steps taken to investigate them, and any corrective actions implemented as a result.

These 5 questions that Representatives Scholten and Stevens included in the letter to Kristi Noem are useful in terms of getting answers, but they fall way short on what it is that the two members of Congress from Michigan will actually do to challenge the Trump Administration and the GEO Group to make sure that detainees are treated humanely.

If people truly want to be involved to demand real transparency and justice for detainees at the Northlake facility then they might want to get involved with the group No Detention Centers in Michigan, which has been working with detainees at that location for years. Michigan members of Congress who visited once to assess the realities of what is happening at the GEO Group-owned facility is completely inadequate and arguably performative. Justice for detainees will not be achieved through partisan politics, but from grassroots organizing and strategic movement work from an immigrant justice framework.

Equally important is the issue of how Rep. Scholten has voted  on immigration matters since being a member of Congress. We know that in the last year Scholten voted for the Laken Riley Act at the beginning of 2025, legislation that further criminalized immigrants. In late January of 2025, Rep. Scholten voted for H.R. 30, which also criminalizes immigrants as I noted then. Then again in February of 2025, Rep., Scholten voted for HR 35, which also further criminalizes immigrants.

Rep. Scholten can talk about the issue of oversight, which has rarely happened when it comes to federal law enforcement agencies such as ICE. (See Silky Shah’s book, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition.) Scholten can lay the blame at the feet of Republicans regarding ICE behavior and she can say she will do everything in her power to hold ICE accountable. However, we know this is standard political speak that translates into something like this – I can’t do anything because Democrats are not in power. The reality is that since ICE was created in 2003, the Obama and Biden administrations, the years when Democrats also had a majority in Congress, did nothing to provide transparency, accountability or oversight of ICE.

Representatives Scholten and Stevens have consistently voted to fund ICE and they are both up for re-election this year, which raises the question of whether they will actually do anything substantively about ICE or are they just engaging in performative politics during an election year where a large percentage of voters are actually demanding that ICE be abolished. I believe it is the later, which is why I don’t believe that members of Congress will fight to end ICE.

I believe that the only way to Abolish ICE is if enough people are mobilized to force politicians to stop funding ICE and to make it so that companies that have contracts with ICE will not be able to profit off of human suffering.