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Opinion | Michigan can protect children, families from immigration enforcement excesses
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As child advocates, we believe all children in Michigan are ours and worthy of protection, no matter where they were born.
Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been more active in Michigan since last spring; the agency reported detaining more than 2,300 people in Michigan in the last year. The vast majority of those detained are not wanted for crimes and do not have felony criminal records.
We’ve seen a father with cancer detained for months, a parent detained after dropping a child off at school, and, recently in Ypsilanti four parents detained at a school drop-off/bus stop. At least five Detroit high school students have been detained and, in one case, a student deported before he could graduate.
Children and parents in Michigan — citizens, refugees, asylum seekers who have legally entered this country and those without legal documentation -— have been stressed and living in fear for months.
Two Michigan Senate Bills Could Help Protect All Michigan Kids
There are two bills in the Michigan Senate — SB 508 and 510 — that could increase protections for our kids. Michigan needs these state laws so that we’re not at the mercy of federal decisions and shifting tides. The time is now.
Senate Bill 508: Safe Spaces
For several decades, ICE has not conducted enforcement in “sensitive areas.” Places like hospitals, schools, churches and child care centers were off-limits because these are places human beings, and especially children, need in their lives. Safe spaces are essential for all children. Having armed, masked men without ID badges come into a hospital or a child care center is traumatizing for citizen and non-citizen children, alike.
Children in Minneapolis don’t have safe spaces anymore. American citizen children who are black or brown have been swept up by ICE agents. Many parents pack them a lunch for school and put their passport around their neck or in their backpack. Schools have been cancelled. Kids have been unintentionally caught up in protests, and infants exposed to pepper spray. Citizen children whose parents or other family members are not citizens are coping with sudden disappearances, or the fear of them, daily. These traumas hurt kids and they are like ripples in our communities— causing harms far beyond a single individual.
The current administration has rescinded the “sensitive areas” policy, and this puts all Michigan kids at risk. All Michigan kids and youth need us to protect safe spaces so they can learn, get care, find safety from abuse, and pray without fear.
SB 508 would limit immigration enforcement in sensitive locations including “educational buildings, places of worship, hospitals, sites of public ceremonies including weddings and funerals, courthouses, and places that provide assistance to children, victims of abuse, pregnant women, or individuals with physical or mental disabilities.” ICE could still obtain a court order or enter these locations if it was required “to prevent immediate danger to the public.”
Senate Bill 510: Making law enforcement identifiable
Kids know what “bad guys” look like. They’re scary and wear masks. They hurt people and have big weapons. Kids see them in movies all the time. When law enforcement is masked, unidentified, armed with military-grade weapons, and taking people away in unmarked vehicles, kids see scary adults who are not safe. Police officers cannot “protect and serve” children if kids can’t tell the good guys from the bad. We expose our children to greater risks when we remove police officers from the list of possible helpers in an emergency.
Ted Nelson, a retired State Police detective sergeant and member of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, said this in testimony to the Jan. 29 meeting of the Michigan Senate Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety Committee:
“Law enforcement has to have respect from a community to be efficient and effective. …I believe that if this continues, that all law enforcement — not just ICE officers or border officers — all officers are going to lose respect by the community, lose trust by the community.”
SB 510 “would require a law enforcement officer, while interacting with a
member of the public in performance of the officer’s duties, to wear an appropriate uniform.” Officers could not wear masks except in certain circumstances outlined in the bill.
Please join us in supporting SB 508 and 510 to protect all Michigan kids from being exposed to more trauma, such as we have seen in Chicago and Minneapolis. Send an email to the Governor and your Senator and Representative here. The choices we make in difficult times say a lot about who we are as Michiganders. Let’s come together to pass these laws to better protect our children – all of them – from traumatising immigration enforcement.
“The children are always ours, every single one of them all over the globe …” James Baldwin, Author and Activist.
Additional note: Abridged for publication. Read the full blog and find resources here. Michigan’s Children hosted a podcast with Michigan Senator Mary Cavanaugh, to discuss SB 508 and “Protecting Michigan Kids From Traumatizing Immigration Enforcement Practices.” Follow our social media for more on the release date for this episode of “Speaking for Kids” or check our website.
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