Channel 8 story on campaign to get the City of Grand Rapids to adopt 6 sanctuary policies is inaccurate and primarily relies on comments from the Mayor

On Tuesday night Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE members both directed comments to the Mayor of Grand Rapids about the 6 sanctuary policies they have been demanding since January of 2025.

The only commercial news agency that reported on Mayor LaGrand’s response was WOODTV8. However, there is no video from channel 8 and it appears that they were just taking comments from the City Commission meeting which is both live-streamed and recorded.

In this post I am including the entire WOODTV8 story, which was posted about 24 hours after the commission meeting, which further suggests that they were not present during the June 16 City Commission meeting. The channel 8 content will be in italics and bolded, with some analysis and background information that follows each section.

Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand addressed repeated calls for the city to adopt sanctuary policies at the city commission meeting Tuesday night. This is an accurate sentence, but it omits the fact that this campaign began in January of 2025, where there were over 3,000 messages sent to the City Commission, the Mayor and the City Manager.

Emotions were high as concerned residents spoke out again, requesting Grand Rapids be designated a sanctuary city. While there is no legal definition of a sanctuary city, the term has historically been applied to how an organization — or in this case, city — would cooperate with federal immigration. The first sentence is inaccurate as the campaign that is being led by Movimiento Cosecha is not calling for Grand Rapids to declare itself a sanctuary city, rather to adopt specific sanctuary polices. (See below) If the first sentence actually reflected what people were demanding the rest of this paragraph would be irrelevant.

Some people say they were worried that their neighbors are going to be taken away from them at any time and that the city needs more action. People are being taken by ICE, almost on a daily basis in Kent County, according to first hand accounts from immigrants and from information that both Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have been collecting the past 18 months.

“The mayor’s repeated refusal to pass very doable sanctuary policies but also the continued lie that he’s met these demands,” one resident said at public comment. The main reason that Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE has been saying that the Mayor is either lying or is misinformed is that they have documented evidence that the GRPD is cooperating with ICE (see top photo in this article and video at this link), as in the case of when the GRPD showed up around the same time as ICE to arrest and detain an immigrant who actually had his asylum application papers with him, which would have been enough to keep him from going to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan.

“No one has explained to me from that group ever, coherently, how they would like that policy to be changed,” LaGrand said. “They sort of have an empty set, but they keep insisting that they’ve got a full set. And I don’t know how to fix that dynamic.”  This is an interesting comment from Mayor LaGrand, especially since at one of his Mayor’s Mondays in December of 2025, many people had conversations with him. Mayor LaGrand said he would be willing to talk more about these demands and specifically said he would be willing to talk with City Commissioners about adopting a policy that would prevent Grand Rapids from entering into a 287g agreement with ICE, which is one of the 6 demands from Cosecha.

Mayor LaGrand said many of the policies are already in place in the city. One GRPD policy adopted in 2019 that states no police officer is permitted to ask about documentation status. If many of these policies have been put in place, no one from the City of Grand Rapids, including Mayor LaGrand has ever produced documented evidence to verify such a claim. On the matter of the GRPD policy adopted in 2019, it should be stated that what is known as the Foreign National policy was adopted after a GRPD Captain called ICE after seeing a news story, even though to person in question was a former US Marine and had legal status in the US. Second, Cosecha is not demanding that the GRPD not ask about the immigration status. In addition, the GRPD’s Foreign National policy states:

The policy allows officers to provide assistance to federal immigration authorities when there is an emergency that poses an immediate danger to public safety or federal agents. 

Many of us from GR Rapid Response to ICE and Movimiento Cosecha are all too familiar that the rhetoric of the City and the GRPD is in dark contrast to what they practice. See my article entitled, the criminalization of dissent in Grand Rapids.

“We have enacted all or have already in place policies which address all of the demands that have been made by a couple groups who keep coming and complaining,” LaGrand added. “I’m sorry that this group isn’t engaging in good faith on things we can do to keep our neighbors safe and that they don’t have any actual ideas that we haven’t already engaged in.” Mayor LaGrand can say this all he wants to, but the community is demanding documented evidence that these policies have “already been adopted.” The City of Grand Rapids to provide concrete evidence of policies they claim are already in place. The Mayor goes on to say that these groups aren’t engaging in good faith? Really? People involved in Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE are some of the most dedicated people I know in this city. Then saying these people don’t have any actual ideas is merely another attempt by Mayor LaGrand to dismiss the work that these two groups have been doing, often at great risk to themselves in order to resist ICE.

LaGrand went on to say that he hopes to engage in a meaningful conversation with the group. No action was taken at Tuesday night’s meeting. Not once since the campaign began in January of 2025 has Mayor LaGrand ever reached out to Movimiento Cosecha or GR Rapid Response to ICE to engage in meaningful conversation. Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE initiated opportunities to have meaningful conversation, first in September of 2025, when both city and county officials were invited to a community forum, and second, when the two groups engaged LaGrand at his Mayor’s Monday event in December.

It’s too bad that WOODTV8 did not bother to reach out to Movimiento Cosecha or GR Rapid Response to ICE for their perspective on these matters. Instead, channel 8 decided to treat this story like they are merely courtroom stenographers just recording what was said and offering no context or verification of the claims made.