Press Conference addresses Mayor LaGrand’s silence on meeting with Cosecha and recent GRPD assistance with ICE abductions

On Tuesday Movimiento Cosecha, GR Rapid Response to ICE and No Detention Centers in Michigan held a Press Conference on the lower level of City Hall. The Press Conference was designed to address two critical issues, the failure of Mayor LaGrand respond to an invitation from Cosecha to have a community meeting on the six sanctuary policies and recent GRPD collaboration with ICE.

During the Press Conference a representative from Cosecha stated:

Mayor LaGrand, in June 2026, during a City Commission meeting, claimed that our groups would not engage in a productive conversation with him. On June 24, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE sent an email inviting Mayor LaGrand to a public meeting. We wrote: “We believe that a public meeting is important to promote transparency, accountability, and meaningful dialogue between community members and city leadership regarding these policies.” We only received an automatic reply confirming that the Mayor’s Office had received our email. We were seeking a possible date for this meeting, and a month later, in July, we sent a follow-up email. To this date, we have received no response. So let’s be clear: we reached out. We invited the Mayor to have a public conversation. We asked for transparency, accountability, and meaningful dialogue.

And yet, there has been silence.

Mayor LaGrand has been insensitive to the immigrant working community facing ICE violence and has shown disregard for the family separation happening in his city. We are here today to demand that Mayor LaGrand respond to the community. 

Regarding the issue of GRPD collaboration with ICE, Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE stated:

On July 28, the GR Rapid Response to ICE hotline received a message that ICE had kidnapped a father who was coming out of the Kentwood court after showing up for a notice of appearance related to some traffic violations. According to his U.S. citizen wife, he did not have an immigration judicial warrant, and he was arrested in front of her and their two young U.S. citizen children. She requested accompaniment to the ICE office to bring paperwork showing that he had an approved immigration process and to ask for her husband to be released.

While we were waiting for the wife to get an answer from the ICE office, GRPD showed up but did not engage with us. They waited until the private GEO van, which transports people and was transporting the husband to North Lake, was ready to leave the ICE office garage, located behind the office. GRPD officers then pushed the responders out of the sidewalk and escorted the GEO van while masked ICE agents remained inside the garage.

Similarly, on Sunday, August 2, GR Rapid Response to ICE and Movimiento Cosecha responded to an alert at the ICE office. Once again, GRPD showed up at the exact moment that the ICE office garage door opened to allow the GEO van to leave. This is showing coordination between ICE, GEO transportation, and GRPD. We broadcast everything through our Facebook Live feed. Even though GRPD continues to deny cooperation with ICE, the evidence is showing the contrary. 

It is imperative that the City pass the six sanctuary policies so that GRPD will have a local ordinance prohibiting the type of cooperation we have just described. City resources should not be used to support ICE’s violent, clandestine, and lawless actions.

Cosecha filmed the entire Press Conferenfce, which you can watch here.

Both Michigan Public Radio and the online publication Michigan Advance attended the Press Conference.

Grand Rapids City Commission meeting

After the Press Conference members of Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE went to the 2pm Grand Rapids City Commission meeting to address the same issues discussed during the Press Conference.

Several people spoke about these two issues, plus they were joined by other community members who spoke primarily about the Flock cameras that the GRPD uses in Grand Rapids.

Several City Commissioners responded at the end to supporting more conversation of the Flock cameras and at a minimum some sort of audit. There were also some acknowledgement of the GRPD collaboration with ICE, but with no specifics and one commissioner referred to it as allegation.

Mayor LaGrand spoke the longest, a total of 23 minutes, which begins at 1:54:16 in the video of the City Commission meeting.

The Mayor went out of his way to salute those speaking about Flock cameras because, “they offered real policy solutions.” This is interesting, because each of the six sanctuary policies that Cosecha introduced at the beginning of 2025 are all concrete solutions that would prohibit the City of Grand Rapids from sharing information on residents with ICE, using City resources to assist ICE and specifically prohibiting the GRPD from working with ICE in any form.

At one point Mayor LaGrand said that he did not laugh at someone who talked about the Peaceful Observers. “That person was openly contemptuous of my involvement with this group,” according to LaGrand. The Mayor then talked about all the work he put into what that group is attempting to do, but he fails to mention that this group formed without the consent of those who are being targeted by ICE. Here is an analysis of the Peaceful Observers group and why it is problematic from white people to create something that affected communities did not ask for.

LaGrand did acknowledge that he was glad for some of the work that Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE has done. He then went on to say that he has investigated himself allegations of ICE activity, with a specific example of ICE taking people from hospitals. LaGrand said he talked with hospital security and hospital administration and they assured him that ICE has not come in the building. The fact is that there have been several incidents at local hospitals where ICE has been active, as people who were being targeted called the GR Rapid Response to ICE hotline requesting people show up. GR Rapid Response to ICE listens to those being targeted by ICE, not those in positions of authority.

At about 2:07:20 into the video the Mayor addresses the incident at the 517 ICE Office where members of GR Rapid Response to ICE were attempting to prevent a GEO Group van that had someone ICE abducted from leaving the 517 Ottawa ICE office, which I reported on.

The Mayor’s response to this incident is exactly what many of us thought he would say, which was that members of GR Rapid Response to ICE were blocking an alleyway and that the GRPD will make sure that even the safety of US federal agents are also being protected. At one point LaGrand said, “ICE agents are humans.”

Those in positions of authority can justify anything they want, and indeed have done so throughout history. A big part of the problem is the narrative that the GRPD and Mayor LaGrand want to use. For the people on the scene they were responding to a GR Rapid Response to ICE call, where ICE had earlier abducted an immigrant in Grand Rapids and brought them to the 517 Ottawa ICE office. Once the abducted immigrant was processed the GEO Group-owned van that was parked inside the 517 Ottawa ICE office would then transport the abducted immigrant to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan. The people who were blocking the alleyway were attempting to prevent the GEO Group van from departing because ICE had abducted another immigrant from this community. Those responding would not call what they did a violation, rather they would call what they did their obligation to practice solidarity with immigrants targeted by ICE and to either disrupt or reduce that harm that ICE had committed and the profiting of the GEO Group, which has a contract with ICE to run the detention center in Baldwin.

Mayor LaGrand can hide behind laws all they want, but just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is right.

“Apartheid was legal.

The Holocaust was legal.

Slavery was legal.

Colonialism was legal.

Legality is a matter of power, not justice.”

Indeed, Dr. King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail said, “individuals have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” This is exactly what GR Rapid Response to ICE is willing to do.