Immigrant rights advocates gathered in the lobby of Grand Rapids City Hall on Tuesday afternoon to state their claim that the Grand Rapids Police Department is coordinating with federal immigration authorities, including ICE, despite city policies against doing so.
“The mayor and the chief of police have been repeatedly telling us since January of 2025 that GRPD is not cooperating with ICE, and we’re saying that that’s a bold-faced lie because we are seeing it on a regular basis firsthand,” said Jeff Smith, an organizer with GR Rapid Response to ICE.
A GRPD spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Michigan Advance that the department “is neither responsible for, nor has the authority to, enforce federal civil immigration laws used to detain or remove undocumented immigrants from the United States” and does not take on the responsibility of performing immigration functions unrelated to investigating and enforcing criminal violations…