Cosecha campaigns against ICE in Kent County: Past and present

In the late Spring/early summer of 2018 people all across the US were outraged at the fact that immigrant families were being separated and the immigrant children were being detained in makeshift cages. Cosecha tapped into this anger right here in Kent County by letting people that immigrant families were being separated right here and that Kent County had a contract with ICE, which began in 2012 during the Obama Administration.

The contract that Kent County had was that whenever an undocumented immigrant was brought to the Kent County Jail, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office would notify ICE and ask if they wanted the jail to hold that person for ICE. The benefit for Kent County was that they would be financially compensated for every undocumented immigrant they held for ICE per day. The Kent County Jail would get $85 per person, per day to hold immigrants for ICE, according to the contract.

Organizers didn’t find out about the ICE contract with Kent County until March of 2018. After several months of meetings and planning, Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE began a campaign to end the contract that Kent County had with ICE on June 28th, 8 years ago.

The first public action was at the Kent County Commission meeting, where 250 showed up, which is the most that have ever showed up to a county commission meetings, since they are held at 8:30am on Thursdays. The action was amazing, which you can read about here, with so many people essentially shutting down the meeting and then 7 people were arrested for blocking the intersection of Michigan and Ottawa near the ICE deployment office.

Over the next 7 months Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE took the following actions in an effort to end the contract with ICE.

• We held dozens of strategy meetings, which always resulted in planning future actions.
• We attended every Kent County Commission Meeting to continue to make our demands, to offer testimony on family separation that was happening by ICE in Kent County and to monitor any comments made by commissioners about the contract.
• Some of the people involved in the campaign met with individual commissioners
• We ran a petition campaign to End the Contract, which we delivered at one of the Commission meetings.
• We held a protest outside of Chairman Saalfeld’s home the night before one of the commission meetings.
• We organized several protests at the Kent County Jail.
• We organized several protest outside of the various ICE offices in downtown Grand Rapids.
• We organized a disruption protest during ArtPrize, on their main stage, drawing attention to family separation in Kent County.
• We created educational materials, which we distributed.
• We created artwork and had sign making parties.
• We spoke to community-based groups about the campaign.
• We utilized social media to education and get the word out about the End the Contract Campaign.
• We held a People’s Commission action during one of the Kent County Commission meetings. 
• We worked with the Western Michigan branch of the ACLU and MIRC, who not only obtained their own FOIA documents, but offered their legal expertise on why Kent County was not legally obligated to cooperate with ICE.

In late 2018, an off-duty GRPD Captain, who was also the police department’s ICE liaison, saw on the news a Latino man attempting to start a fire at one of the downtown hospitals. What was really happening is that the person was a former US Marine who was suffering from PTSD after being in Iraq and Afghanistan. The GRPD cop who was the ICE liaison engaged in racially profiling by calling ICE, which led to this story getting national attention.

In January of 2019, the Kent County Sheriff announced that they were requiring ICE to have a judicial warrant to hold immigrants at the Kent County Jail. Both the ACLU and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center representative (Hillary Scholten) that met with Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE felt that this was a sufficient victory and there was no real need for Kent County to end the contract with ICE. Cosecha was not satisfied with this idea, since they didn’t agree with any immigrant being held for ICE at the jail, regardless if there was a judicial warrant or not. Immigrant families were still being separated.

The End the Contract campaign continued with many of the same tactics and strategies, but with an increased effort to pressure the City of Grand Rapids for allowing the GRPD Captain to continue acting as the department’s liaison with ICE with no consequences for the racial profiling he did with the former US Marine Jilmar Ramos Gomez.

Cosecha never revived their demands, they were still demanding an end to the contract and continued to do so until late 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. You read that correctly…..ICE decided to end the contract, not the Kent County Sheriff nor the Kent County commission, despite what one former County Commission claimed about the end of the ICE contract.

The campaign to end the Kent County contract with ICE took 14 months of planning, strategy and tactics and ICE ended the contract because they were confronted with a public relations problem from all of the negative press.

Cosecha’s campaign to get the City of Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt 6 sanctuary policies

Fast forward to 2025 and Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE have once again organized a campaign to get the city and the county to adopt 6 sanctuary policies, policies that will prohibit both governing bodies from collaborating or cooperating with ICE in any way and these policies will effectively reduced the harm that ICE is inflicting on immigrants in Kent County.

The current campaign has also resulted in numerous meetings, strategy sessions and actions, such as:

• Marches
• Actions outside the homes of City and County officials
• Attending City and County Commission meetings
• Disrupting City and County Commission meetings
• Street Theater
• Civil Disobedience
• Education on the 6 sanctuary policies
• Online letters writing
• An organized boycott campaign
• Press Conferences
• Live-streaming of actions

The campaign to get the Grand Rapids and Kent County to adopt the 6 sanctuary policies has already taken longer than the End of the ICE Contract campaign that was begun in 2018. However, the sanctuary policies campaign involves six demands as opposed to just one demand.

Another major difference is the fact that ICE has roughly ten times the amount of money per year than it did in 2018-2019. ICE has increased the number of agents in Grand Rapids and has increased the number of arrests and detentions compared to what was happening when the End the Contract campaign was in full swing. There are also more ICE contracts in Kent County now than there were before.

Despite the challenges that are faced with the current sanctuary policy demands in Grand Rapids and Kent County, both Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE are committed to winning these demands. Movement work always takes time and is never immediate.

If you want to get involved in this important work then you should contact Movimiento Cosecha movimientocosechagr@gmail.com and GR Rapid Response to ICE info@grrapidresponsetoice.org. There is a great deal of work to be done and we need lots of people with lots of passion and skills to get the 6 sanctuary policies adopted. The immigrant justice movement needs all of us!