Detroit City Council member Gabriela Santiago-Romero urged Michigan lawmakers to pass a legislative package that aims to protect undocumented residents from controversial federal immigration enforcement tactics.
Santiago-Romero, a city councilwoman representing Michigan’s largest population of undocumented residents in Southwest Detroit, told lawmakers Thursday afternoon in the civil rights, judiciary and public safety Senate committee that ICE agents are “clearly violating our rights.”
Supporters and opponents of the bills packed the room in Lansing where lawmakers bickered over the amount of time each advocate was given to speak.
During the committee hearing, state Sen. Jim Runestead, R-White Lake, accused Detroit state Senator Stephanie Chang, the committee chair, of attempting to censor him for interrupting his rebuttal questions to move onto the next speaker.
Runestead is also the Michigan GOP chairman.
Senate Bills 508-510 would ban law enforcement officers from wearing masks, would block federal law enforcement from operating at “sensitive locations” and would block the sharing of information between local municipalities and the federal government for the purpose of immigration enforcement without a court-issued warrant.
These locations include an educational institution; a place of worship; a hospital; the site of a funeral, wedding, or other public religious ceremony; a courthouse; or the site of an organization that is assisting children, pregnant women, victims of crime or abuse, or an individual with significant mental of physical disabilities.
SB 509 would would enact a new law to prohibit a government entity from providing an individual’s identifying information to a person without a court-issued warrant if the information would be used to enforce federal immigration law.
This information includes anything that identifies an individual, including the individual’s photograph or image, name, address, driver license number, Social Security number, telephone number, digitized signature, or medical and disability information. The term would include any information pertaining to an individual’s criminal history, and any list, dataset, or aggregated data that contained the information described in the definition.
Austin Lowes, the chairman of the Sault St. Marie Tribes of Chippewas Indians. He said he reminded his 50,000 members of their rights as Tribal and U.S. citizens.
Lowes said federal agents are stoking fear on native lands across the country.
“Our tribe has taken a proactive approach on how they can handle immigration enforcement situations that may arise on tribal properties,” Lowes said. “Methods that increase fear do not results in deescalate outcomes, instead, they only result in generational trauma, that further divides us.”
Shari Rendall, the state and local engagement director for FAIR, a right-wing national nonprofit that opposes illegal immigration, said sensitive location legislation “creates a bright line that prohibits immigration enforcement.”
Rendall, who said she flew to the hearing from D.C., argued federal agents entering sensitive locations seek to minimize enforcement impact by ensuring their actions are discreet. She said it’s not true that places like schools and churches are the targets of enforcement.
Santiago-Romero said parents and children are afraid to leave their homes. The aggressive tactics like arresting individuals in court houses as they show up to immigration hearings disincentivizes people from using the system to attain citizenship.
“Local businesses are struggling to stay afloat because people are afraid to patronize their shops, or employees are afraid to show up for work,” Santiago-Romero said.
She reiterated the calls for greater regulations for Immigrants and Customs Enforcement and Border and Customs Patrol agents at the Detroit Policy Conference Thursday afternoon during a roundtable with other council members.
Santiago-Romero, who said earlier this week she was meeting with Mayor Mary Sheffield to speak about ways to protect residents, suggested during the committee hearing she’s working on similar proposals at the city level.
Council member at-large Mary Waters submitted a proposal that would ban law enforcement officers in Detroit from wearing masks. She named the ordinance, “Alex Pretti Detroit No Masks,” in honor of the slain 37-year-old VA nurse who was killed by masked agents in Minneapolis last week.
“We will not have a Detroit where a masked mob are afforded the opportunity to enforce the law with impunity. We want to see the faces of law enforcement in Detroit,” Waters said in a release.
