Immigration

Washington –  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents are "acting with impunity" in Michigan and have a pattern of abusing even U.S. citizens and they must now be brought to account for these violations, activists said on Thursday.

Although ICE admitted blame in an operation in late March in which its agents questioned or detained heads of households when they dropped their children off at the Hope Academy elementary school in Detroit, the activists are now demanding corrective measures be taken.

"ICE has a history of acting with impunity. We hope that someone will pay for the violations of their own policies," Alliance for Immigrant Rights and Reform Michigan, or AIRR, director Ryan Bates said in a teleconference.

"What we've shown is a pattern of abuses that can only be occurring with the knowledge and consent of the leadership of the ICE office in Detroit," said Bates, whose group is not ruling out a lawsuit if ICE does not correct the alleged abuses.

ICE's headquarters in Washington has not responded to a request by Efe to comment on the situation.

The AIRR objection "is not because ICE is enforcing the laws, although we don't agree with them, but rather over its abusive conduct, which we believe is closely linked" to the increase in the number of immigration raids, Bates told Efe.

"When they put more new agents on the streets to increase deportations, without adequate training or supervision, there will certainly be abuses," Bates said.

During the teleconference, Ruben Torres and Jorge Deanda, two U.S.-born Hispanics, described how ICE agents questioned them and asked for their "papers" without any justification.

"They detained me because I'm Latino ... That's not the U.S. in which I grew up, and I hope that measures are taken to stop the violation of the civil rights of Latinos and other minorities in Detroit," Torres, who was born in that city and described himself as "half Puerto Rican, half Mexican," said.

Torres said that he was detained on March 29 by ICE on a highway as he was returning home from work.

The ICE agent insisted that he produce his birth certificate and insinuated that his documents "probably were fake," Torres said.

Deanda said that on April 7, ICE agents knocked on his door and, after a tense exchange of words, never explained to him why they were looking for him.

These incidents, according to the AIRR, can be added to the March 31 operation at the Hope school, located in a mainly Hispanic neighborhood in southwestern Detroit.

Six SUVs with tinted windows and belonging to ICE surrounded the school and two families were detained, media reports said.

The school turned into a "ghost school" and several children still have not returned to classes, principal Ali Abdel said.

ICE admitted that some agents may have violated the "rules and priorities" of the federal agency and, according to its national spokesman, Brian Hale, it is conducting an "internal review" of the matter.

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