In Detroit, it’s not entirely uncommon to make a wrong turn that leads you toward another country. Some of us have made this mistake… and found ourselves on the Ambassador Bridge to Canada. It’s annoying — and more than a headache. But recently, this wrong turn has been much more impactful for immigrants.
After making that wrong turn, more than 200 people have recently been detained at the border this year in a facility that is not equipped for detention. Migrants seeking asylum in Canada who’ve been turned back have also been detained, according to an NPR investigation.
That investigation led to an inquiry by Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who held a press conference on the matter last week with staff attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
Tlaib says the 213 people detained at the bridge since January included families with children. At least 90% of the individuals detained were people who made a wrong turn, she said.
Ruby Robinson, senior managing attorney with the Michigan Immigrants Rights Center, joined The Metro on Tuesday to talk more about the detainments.
Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.
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The Michigan Immigrants’ Rights Center is raising concern over a new agreement Jackson County Sheriff’s Department has entered with Immigrations Customs and Enforcement.
Known as the Warrant Service Officer program, the contracts allow officers that work in jails to serve and execute administrative warrants for immigrants in their system, and detain them until ICE can come and finish the deportation process.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that encouraged local law enforcement departments to enter into the special agreement.
Christine Sauve, a spokesperson for the Michigan Immigrants’ Rights Center, says the agreement will decrease public trust and could increase instances of racial profiling.
“Community members of all different immigration statuses are more likely to come forward and report crime or participate in investigations if they know that their local officers are keeping their work separate from that of immigration, customs and enforcement,” Sauve said.
MIRC is also concerned that patrols officers may also be encouraged to make more arrests of immigrant residents for minor infractions as well.
“Officers may only ask people for their immigration status and check if there’s an ICE administrative warrant depending on the color of their skin, or how they speak English with an accent or some other signifier on their clothing,” Sauve said.
The program does not provide any additional funding for the efforts of officers.
Sauve says local tax dollars should only be used to enforce local laws, and federal tax dollars can be used for the work of federal immigration enforcement.
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SILVERTHORNE, Colo. — When Adolfo Román García-Ramírez walks home in the evening from his shift at a grocery store in this central Colorado mountain town, sometimes he thinks back on his childhood in Nicaragua. Adults, he recollects, would scare the kids with tales of the “Mona Bruja,” or “Monkey Witch.” Step too far into the dark, they told him, and you might just get snatched up by the giant monstrous monkey who lives in the shadows.
Now, when García-Ramírez looks over his shoulder, it’s not monster monkeys he is afraid of. It’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“There’s this constant fear that you’ll be walking down the street and a vehicle rolls up,” García-Ramírez, 57, said in Spanish. “They tell you, ‘We’re from ICE; you’re arrested,’ or, ‘Show me your papers.’”
Silverthorne, a commuter town between the ski meccas of Breckenridge and Vail, has been García-Ramírez’s home for the past two years. He works as a cashier at the grocery and shares a two-bedroom apartment with four roommates.
The town of nearly 5,000 has proved a welcome haven for the political exile, who was released from prison in 2023 after Nicaragua’s authoritarian government brokered a deal with the U.S. government to transfer more than 200 political prisoners to the U.S. The exiles were offered temporary residency in the U.S. under a Biden administration humanitarian parole program.
García-Ramírez’s two-year humanitarian parole expired in February, just a few weeks after President Donald Trump issued an executive order to end the program that had permitted temporary legal residency in the U.S. for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, putting him at risk of deportation. García-Ramírez was stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship when he came to the U.S. Just over a year ago, he applied for political asylum. He is still waiting for an interview.
“I can’t safely say I’m calm, or I’m OK, right now,” García-Ramírez said. “You feel unsafe, but you also feel incapable of doing anything to make it better.”
Vail and Breckenridge are world famous for their ski slopes, which attract millions of people a year. But life for the tourism labor force that serves Colorado’s mountain resorts is less glamorous. Residents of Colorado’s mountain towns experience high rates of suicide and substance use disorders, fueled in part by seasonal fluctuations in income that can cause stress for many in the local workforce.
The Latino communities who make up significant proportions of year-round populations in Colorado’s mountain towns are particularly vulnerable. A recent poll found more than 4 in 5 Latino respondents in the Western Slope region, home to many of the state’s rural ski resort communities, expressed “extremely or very serious” concern about substance use. That’s significantly higher than in rural eastern Colorado’s Morgan County, which also has a sizable Latino population, and in Denver and Colorado Springs.
Statewide, concerns about mental health have surged among Latinos in recent years, rising from fewer than half calling it an extremely or very serious problem in 2020 to more than three-quarters in 2023. Health care workers, researchers, and community members all say factors such as language differences, cultural stigma, and socioeconomic barriers may exacerbate mental health issues and limit the ability to access care.
“You’re not getting regular medical care. You’re working long hours, which probably means that you can’t take care of your own health,” said Asad Asad, a Stanford University assistant professor of sociology. “All of these factors compound the stresses that we all might experience in daily life.”
Add sky-high costs of living and an inadequate supply of mental health facilities across Colorado’s rural tourist destinations, and the problem becomes acute.
Now, the Trump administration’s threats of immigration raids and imminent deportation of anyone without legal U.S. residency have caused stress levels to soar. In communities around Vail, advocates estimate, a vast majority of Latino residents do not have legal status. Communities near Vail and Breckenridge have not experienced immigration raids, but in neighboring Routt County, home to Steamboat Springs, at least three people with criminal records have been detained by ICE, according to news reports. Social media posts falsely claiming local ICE sightings have further fueled concerns.
Yirka Díaz Platt, a bilingual social worker in Silverthorne originally from Peru, said a pervasive fear of deportation has caused many Latino workers and residents to retreat into the shadows. People have begun to cancel in-person meetings and avoid applying for government services that require submitting personal data, according to local health workers and advocates. In early February, some locals didn’t show up to work as part of a nationwide “day without immigrants” strike. Employers wonder whether they will lose valuable employees to deportation.
Some immigrants have stopped driving out of fear they will be pulled over by police. Paige Baker-Braxton, director of outpatient behavioral health at the Vail Health system, said she has seen a decline in visits from Spanish-speaking patients over the last few months.
“They’re really trying to keep to themselves. They are not really socializing much. If you go to the grocery stores, you don’t see much of our community out there anymore,” Platt said. “There’s that fear of, ‘No, I’m not trusting anyone right now.’”
Juana Amaya is no stranger to digging in her heels to survive. Amaya immigrated to the Vail area from Honduras in 1983 as a single mother of a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old. She has spent more than 40 years working as a house cleaner in luxury condos and homes around Vail, sometimes working up to 16 hours a day. With barely enough time to finish work and care for a family at home, she said, it is often hard for Latinos in her community to admit when the stress has become too much.
“We don’t like to talk about how we’re feeling,” she said in Spanish, “so we don’t realize that we’re dealing with a mental health problem.”
The current political climate has only made things worse.
“It’s had a big impact,” she said. “There are people who have small children and wonder what they’ll do if they’re in school and they are taken away somewhere, but the children stay. What do you do?”
Asad has studied the mental health impacts of deportation rhetoric on Latino communities. He co-authored a study, published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that found escalated deportation rhetoric may cause heightened levels of psychological distress in Latino noncitizens and even in Latino citizens.
Asad found that both groups may experience increased stress levels, and research has borne out the negative consequences of a parent’s lack of documentation on the health and educational attainment of their children.
“The inequalities or the hardships we impose on their parents today are the hardships or inequalities their children inherit tomorrow,” Asad said.
Despite heightened levels of fear and anxiety, Latinos living and working near Vail still find ways to support one another and seek help. Support groups in Summit County, home to Breckenridge and less than an hour’s drive from Vail, have offered mental health workshops for new immigrants and Latina women. Building Hope Summit County and Olivia’s Fund in Eagle County, home to Vail, help those without insurance pay for a set number of therapy sessions.
Vail Health plans to open a regional inpatient psychiatric facility in May, and the Mobile Intercultural Resource Alliance provides wraparound services, including behavioral health resources, directly to communities near Vail.
Back in Silverthorne, García-Ramírez, the Nicaraguan exile, takes things one day at a time.
“If they deport me from here, I’d go directly to Nicaragua,” said García-Ramírez, who said he had received a verbal death threat from authorities in his native country. “Honestly, I don’t think I would last even a day.”
In the meantime, he continues to make the routine trek home from his cashier job, sometimes navigating slick snow and dark streets past 9 p.m. When nightmarish thoughts about his own fate in America surface, García-Ramírez focuses on the ground beneath his feet.
“Come rain, shine, or snow,” he said, “I walk.”
Thisarticlewas published with thesupportof theJournalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship,assistedby grants from The Commonwealth Fund.
He came to the U.S. after Nicaragua’ s authoritarian government brokered a deal with the U.S. to transfer more than 200 political prisoners to the U.S. But President Donald Trump issued an executive order to end the humanitarian parole program, and García-Ramírez fears he will be killed if he’ s sent back to Nicaragua. (Rae Solomon/KUNC/TNS)
Last month, the U.S. government deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador who has lived in Maryland for the past 15 years — ignoring a federal court order forbidding his removal.
Garcia, who was detained for alleged association with the MS-13 gang, is now being detained at the Center for Terrorism Confinement in El Salvador. And the Trump administration insists it’s not required to engage El Salvador’s government to bring him back.
Trump’s defiance of court orders at the national level, is also having a local impact.
University of Michigan law professor, legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Barbara McQuade, returned to The Metro to discuss this defiance to court orders by the Trump administration.
Editor’s note: The Metro reached out to Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall and Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt. We have yet to hear back from them.
Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.
More stories from The Metro on Wednesday, April 16:
Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.
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Tens of thousands of immigrant children — including hundreds in Michigan — came to the U.S. fleeing gangs, human trafficking or trying to re-unite with family members.
Nonprofit groups supplied attorneys to help keep the children here, some so young they need a teddy bear to calm them when they testify in immigration court.
That’s hitting the nonprofit Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) hard.
Christine Sauve, manager of policy and communication for MIRC, told WDET the group has to make severe cuts in key areas.
Listen: Michigan Immigrant Rights group shares repercussions of federal funding cuts
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Christine Sauve, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center: We did lose federal funding for two of our programs. One is the help desk in immigration court. We had previously received a stop-work order on that program. There was a court order for us to return to services and then just last week, the federal government terminated the contract completely. There is continued litigation on that. However, the funding has been terminated for now. The other program is our unaccompanied children’s program. We provide legal representation and “Know your rights” information to all immigrant children in Michigan in court proceedings. Unfortunately, that program had received a stop-work order. Then it was lifted too. But the contract was terminated at the end of March. There was litigation filed in that case as well. And unfortunately, to date, the Trump administration has not followed the court’s orders. Payment has not been made for those services, and due to the financial pressure from the loss of both of those contracts, we’ve had to lay off 72 staff in our five offices across the state. We will still have our small help desk team, five individuals operating outside of the Detroit immigration court. We have 49 staff remaining distributed in our five offices across the state.
Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: In terms of what the administration is supposed to do according to the courts, have they ordered them to fund you guys and they are simply not?
CS: In the unaccompanied children’s case, the hearings are ongoing. But after the last judge’s order to return to services, the government has not complied with those orders. There has been no payment and no communication with the contractor. We are a subcontractor for the services. There’s been no communication, no follow through, no intention shown to provide payment for the services. So without the federal funding coming in we were left with very difficult pressures to continue our services as best we can. What we do know is that under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a bipartisan act passed by Congress decades ago, it acknowledged the unique vulnerability of children and actually codified the federal government’s obligation and responsibilities to ensure that unaccompanied children have legal representation so they’re not facing that risk of deportation without due process, without a chance for a fair hearing in court.
“Most unaccompanied children are eligible for permanent status and other forms of relief under current U.S. law. But they can’t access that relief without an attorney to help make their case in court. It’s so heartbreaking because children just cannot meaningfully navigate immigration court alone. We don’t expect children to do that in any other court process in America.”
– Christine Sauve, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center
There was a recognition that it could not be a fair hearing if the child did not have an attorney or representation. Most unaccompanied children are eligible for permanent status and other forms of relief under current U.S. law. But they can’t access that relief without an attorney to help make their case in court. It’s so heartbreaking because children just cannot meaningfully navigate immigration court alone. We don’t expect children to do that in any other court process in America.
QK: At times some unaccompanied kids try to get a sponsor in the U.S., perhaps a family member, after they arrive here. There’s concerns from some sponsors now about doing that going forward, because some of their own personal information could be revealed that didn’t used to have to be. How is that process unfolding?
CS: The Trump administration had authorized information-sharing between agencies. There’s something known as the “foundational rule” for the unaccompanied children’s program. It previously stated that information about sponsors’ immigration status could not be shared with other federal agencies, in particular Immigration, Customs and Enforcement. This administration has changed course to permit sharing of sponsor immigration status with law enforcement, specifically for the purposes of achieving their goals of mass deportation. They are looking at all avenues to do so. And unfortunately, it affects some of the most vulnerable of our community members, the children who are placed in those homes. They’ve been placed with family or relatives that they know and trust. Removing the sponsor would affect the health and outcomes for the child as well. So that is challenging our work right now.
QK: With your current situation, while you still watch what’s going on with the litigation that’s underway, where do you guys go from here? How badly understaffed are you? Is it going to affect your mission tremendously as you go forward?
CS: The capacity will be lowered but we will not stop representing the children that we currently have in our caseload. We currently have 800 cases that are still proceeding. We’ll have a small team focusing on those cases for the next nine months to complete as many of them as we can. But unfortunately, we won’t be able to accept any new children’s cases for the foreseeable future. We have done a fair amount of fundraising. But there’s a reason that public funded services exist and it is because often other entities are unable to provide that level of funding. We have been very busy over the past couple of months reaching out to as many foundations and private donors as possible to raise the funds to have this small team continue over the next nine months. I don’t think with the current funding we have available at the moment we could continue that beyond nine months.
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President Donald Trump campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. So far, he hasn’t been successful. However, it’s not for lack of trying.
There’s been several high profile instances where Immigration and Customs Enforcement have detained longtime U.S. residents, who were not naturalized citizens.
Some have been deported — often without due process. Many students — including four at Wayne State University — have had their visas revoked with no warning.
But what about U.S. Citizens?
Recently, attorney Amir Makled, was detained at Detroit Metro Airport for two hours after returning from a trip from the Dominican Republic with his family.
He’s representing a pro-Palestinian protester who has been charged by Attorney General Dana Nessel and thinks that’s the reason why he was flagged by U.S. Customs.
So what should you do if stopped at the border or coming back from a flight abroad?
Phil Mayor, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, says it’s important for people to be vigilant, but also stay calm.
If you are a U.S. citizen, you have to be admitted back into the country. Still, Mayor says, “the border patrol asserts the authority to search the phones and devices of anybody crossing the border, but how you might choose to react to that will depend in part upon your citizenship status.”
That means non-residents might be denied entry to the U.S. if they don’t consent to letting their phone be searched.
If you’re a citizen and you do not consent to a search of your phone or laptop, Customs and Border Protection can take it.
“If you refuse, it’s possible that the Border Patrol will seize the device, in which case you should insist on a receipt and the Border Patrol is supposed to return it within five days, unless there’s exceptional circumstances,” Mayor said.
If you’re like Makled and are an attorney, Mayor says you should tell CBP.
“If you have decided to consent to a search, or if your device has been seized and you have legally privileged material, such as attorney client or attorney work product material, you should inform Border Patrol that there is privileged material on your device,” he said.
Mayor recommends using a travel-only smartphone when traveling overseas to potentially eliminate the hassle.
It should be noted that checking electronic devices at U.S. Ports of Entry is not new. In 2023 — during the Joe Biden Administration — CBP checked the phones and laptops of over 41,000 travelers — nearly five times the amount in 2015.
However, with the Trump administration’s stated goal of removing immigrants from this country, Mayor says it’s important for citizens to stay vigilant.
“Many of this administration’s tactics are designed to scare and divide us, and it’s wise to take protections, to protect privacy, but also not to be cowed by those who want to create a police state through our fear and acquiescence.”
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Monday paused plans by the Trump administration to end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, a week before they were scheduled to expire.
The order by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco is a relief for 350,000 Venezuelans whose Temporary Protected Status was scheduled to expire April 7. The lawsuit was filed by lawyers for the National TPS Alliance and TPS holders across the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has also announced the end of TPS for an estimated 250,000 additional Venezuelans in September.
Chen said in his ruling that the action by Noem “threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States.”
He said the government had failed to identify any “real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries” and said plaintiffs will likely succeed in showing that Noem’s actions “are unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”
Chen, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said his order applies nationally.
He gave the government one week to file notice of an appeal and the plaintiffs one week to file to pause for 500,000 Haitians whose TPS protections are set to expire in August. Alejandro Mayorkas, the previous secretary, had extended protections for all three cohorts into 2026.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, center, speaks to the press during the arrival of Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, Monday, March 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Congress created TPS, as the law is known, in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife, giving people authorization to live and work in the U.S. in increments of up to 18 months if the Homeland Security secretary deems conditions in their home countries are unsafe for return.
The reversals are a major about-face from immigration policies under former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and come as Republican President Donald Trump and his top aides have ratcheted up attacks on judges who rule against them, with immigration being at the forefront of many disagreements.
At a hearing last Monday, lawyers for TPS holders said that Noem has no authority to cancel the protections and that her actions were motivated in part by racism. They asked the judge to pause Noem’s orders, citing the irreparable harm to TPS holders struggling with fear of deportation and potential separation from family members.
Government lawyers for Noem said that Congress gave the secretary clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program and that the decisions were not subject to judicial review. Plaintiffs have no right to thwart the secretary’s orders from being carried out, they said.
But Chen found the government’s arguments unpersuasive and found that numerous derogatory and false comments by Noem — and by Trump — against Venezuelans as criminals show that racial animus was a motivator in ending protections.
“Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” he wrote.
Biden sharply expanded use of TPS and other temporary forms of protection in a strategy to create and expand legal pathways to live in the United States while suspending asylum for those who enter illegally.
Trump has questioned the the impartiality of a federal judge who blocked his plans to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, levelling his criticism only hours before his administration asked an appeals court to lift the judge’s order.
The administration has also said it was revoking temporary protections for more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have come to the U.S. since October 2022 through another legal avenue called humanitarian parole, which Biden used more than any other president. Their two-year work permits will expire April 24.
Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States peer through windows of an Eastern Airlines plane upon arriving at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Cristian Hernandez)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is resisting a federal judge’s demand for more information about flights that took deportees to to El Salvador, arguing on Wednesday that the court should end its “continued intrusions” into the authority of the executive branch.
It’s the latest development in a showdown between the Trump administration and the judge who temporarily blocked deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration. President Donald Trump has called for the judge’s impeachment as the Republican escalates his conflict with a judiciary after a series of court setbacks over his executive actions.
U.S. District Judge Jeb Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, had ordered the Trump administration to answer several questions under seal, where the information would not be publicly exposed. There were questions about the planes’ takeoff and landing times, and the number of people deported under Trump’s proclamation.
In court papers filed hours before the deadline to respond Wednesday, the Justice Department said the judge’s questions are “grave encroachments on core aspects of absolute and unreviewable Executive Branch authority relating to national security, foreign relations and foreign policy.” The department said it was considering invoking the “state secrets privilege” to allow the government to withhold some of the information sought by the court.
“The underlying premise of these orders … is that the Judicial Branch is superior to the Executive Branch, particularly on non-legal matters involving foreign affairs and national security. The Government disagrees,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. “The two branches are co-equal, and the Court’s continued intrusions into the prerogatives of the Executive Branch, especially on a non-legal and factually irrelevant matter, should end.”
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally declared wars. and claimed there was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Boasberg ordered the administration not to deport, through that 1798 law, anyone in its custody.
Told there were planes in the air headed to El Salvador, Boasberg said Saturday evening that he and the government needed to move fast. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told the government’s lawyer.
Hours later, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said the deportees had arrived in his country. “Oopsie…too late” he said in a social media post, above an article referencing Boasberg’s order.
The administration contends that a judge lacks the authority to tell the president whether he can determine the country is being invaded under the act, or how to defend it.
Boasberg’s new order for answers came after the administration provided limited information in response to a sharp questioning from the judge at a Monday hearing.
The administration said in a filing Tuesday that two planes took off before Boasberg’s order went into effect, and a third plane that took off after the ruling came down did not include anyone deported under the law. The administration declined, however, to provide estimates about the number of people subject to the proclamation.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a Monday briefing that about 261 people were deported, including 137 under the law.
FILE – A mega-prison known as Detention Center Against Terrorism (CECOT) stands in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez, File)
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