A Detroit group is teaching residents about rights they have during ICE interactions. Here's how.
An immigrant rights group spent its Saturday making sure people in Southwest Detroit know their rights when it comes to interactions with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Members of the Detroit Community Action Committee gathered outside the Prince Valley Market to strategize before they began a walk through the neighborhood.
"We're going to just walk around the community and talk to people and ask them what it is that they themselves feel like they need, how we can support them," Mocha Brown, a member of the Detroit Community Action Committee, said.
After Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, the group quickly organized a protest outside of the federal agency's Detroit Field Office.
"People are sick of it all over the place, and if it happens in one place, it can happen in any city. So I think that's why people are mobilizing everywhere," Rue Rodriguez, a member of the Detroit Community Action Committee, said.
Their continued efforts took them to homes and businesses along Michigan Avenue where they handed out information to display on walls.
The flyers are a notice to ICE and law enforcement that says if they "don't have an official warrant with a valid signature, no entry."
"That's one of the things people can, I guess, fall for the trap of, people not understanding what a valid warrant looks like, that they don't have to open their doors to ICE without one. That includes businesses," Brown said.
Business owners and community members were receptive to the group's message and learning more about their campaign to make Detroit a sanctuary city, which would put limits on city and ICE collaboration.
"It would empower the community to kind of fight back against these ICE agents that are out here raiding and now, sometimes, murdering our community members," Rodriguez said.
After several miles of walking and door-knocking, organizers said they were ready to keep fighting.
The group plans to talk to lawmakers and is taking their sanctuary city demands to the Detroit City Council in-person on Tuesday.
