The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office is monitoring heightened immigration enforcement activity in the county.
Washtenaw County Sheriff Alyshia Dyer says residents alerted her office to four different incidents involving ICE agents between Nov. 5 and 10. The incidents took place in Ypsilanti and Pittsfield Township. Dyer says ICE agents arrested people, including an 81-year-old man who has since been released.
Some ICE agents have been fully masked. Dyer says she’s particularly concerned about ICE agents who have been driving unmarked vehicles with no license plates. She says this made it more difficult for her office to identify the ICE vehicles as such.
“We empathize with what the community’s been going through. People deserve to know who is policing them, who is driving around in our community. And we really hope that these concealment and masking and darking out license plate tactics stop.”
Dyer says her office has reported the vehicles with concealed license plates to the Department of Homeland Security.
“The reality is no one is above the law and it is not legal in Michigan to black out your plate completely like this. And it’s not consistent with federal regulations as well.”
A statement Dyer’s office released yesterday says residents can call 911 to report a vehicle with a concealed license plate. It says the sheriff’s department will “respond, document what happened, and investigate when warranted, just as we would in any other situation.”…