Detroit Chief of Police, Todd Bettison, was supposedly going to fire two officers for contacting Border Patrol during traffic stops. This led to Border Patrol detaining two citizens. However, on Thursday February 19, when Detroit Board of Police Commissioners voted to suspend the two officers without pay for 30 days, the chief changed his tune and decided he was satisfied with the actions of the board being the “ultimate discipline for these officers.”
Both Mayor Mary Sheffield and Representative Rashida Tlaib supported Bettison’s earlier decision to fire the officers. The mayor’s media relations director, John Roach, stated, “This administration will reinforce the long-standing policy that the Detroit Police Department does not, in any way, engage in federal immigration enforcement.”
His decision not to fire the officers comes after Michigan House Speaker Mike Hall warned the city that terminating the officers would go against a rule adopted by House Republicans which states that cities whose policies undercut federal immigration policy would be restricted from receiving earmark grants. These grants are one-time federal funds which are used for specific projects. In Detroit, those projects include reconstruction and upgrades for certain roads and the partial funding of a new transit center in the city. Another possible reason for Bettison’s backtracking could be the lawsuit that one of the officers filed after they were suspended with pay on February 10.
Despite Bettison’s backpedaling, it is important to understand that the mass movement across the country against ICE terror and Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda initially made the police chief claim he was going to fire the two cops. This movement is the reason Democrats have taken any stance at all, from Brandon Johnson in Chicago signing his executive order for “ICE free zones,” to other Democrats also rallying around the calls of activists to “abolish ICE.”
Though these stances are a reflection of the power of the movement, we must also remember they are part of Democrats’ attempts to co-opt and deescalate the movement and channel the masses away from the streets and back to the ballot box.
The suspension of the officers is happening amid plans for a new ICE detention center in Romulus, Michigan, the location of Detroit Metro Airport. This center is part of a larger initiative by the Trump administration to purchase 23 warehouses across the country for the sake of detaining immigrants. Bloomberg reports that these new sites would give ICE 76,500 new beds to fill.
Emma Winger, the deputy legal director of the American Immigration Council stated in the article, “To reach these kinds of numbers…they’d have to dramatically increase their presence in communities across the country.” This can only mean that if we think that terror against immigrants is bad now, if and when Trump gets these new warehouse jails going, things are going to get much, much worse. Just as the cops arrest Black and Brown people across the country to fill beds to make money for privately owned prisons, these warehouse deals will be fueling the fire of the war against immigrants.
However, due to the influence of the movement, many companies are refusing to sell their buildings to ICE, like Jim Pattison Developments, the owner of a 552,000-square-foot warehouse in Ashland, West Virginia, who backed out of their deal with ICE. Their decision came after a meeting by the Hanover County Board of Supervisors in which more than 1,000 people attended, both inside the meeting and outside, to speak out against the deal. It is the power of people who influence these changes.
Because of the level of organization by residents of Minneapolis against ICE, and so many other actions that have taken place across the country, Democrats and large corporations are feeling the power of the anti-ICE movement and the demands of people from across the country to abolish the agency.
However, we cannot rely on simply pressuring them to make changes and achieve full rights for immigrants and the oppressed in this country. We need to draw lessons from Minneapolis, to build organizations independent of the Democrats, because as the events above have shown, the real power lies within the people and workers to demand equal political, economic, and social rights for immigrants.
The post Near-Termination of Two Officers Shows Power of Anti-ICE Movement in Detroit appeared first on Left Voice.
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Should have been “Two officers nearly terminal”.
If I were the police chief, I would also pretend that I wanted to fire the officers and then throw my hands up when I hit a roadblock I was well aware of before the process began.
Most heavily armed populace in history, but let’s keep begging the pork boss to BBQ his own.
