Brielle Meyer

The group’s appearance follows an online campaign that generated 20,000 letters to city officials supporting sanctuary city status in just one week.

^{Photo credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto}

Note: This is a story I wrote for WZZM 13 in January of 2025. The original can be found here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Immigration activists packed Tuesday evening’s Grand Rapids City Commission meeting, pressing officials to declare the West Michigan city an official sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.

Since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, immigration enforcement operations have been publicized around the country, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said are ongoing.

Social media posts from other DEA and Homeland Security offices noted additional weekend operations in at least Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska and Texas.

This has left many concerned about what this could mean. One person at Tuesday’s city commission meeting expressed that saying, “many of us are here fearing for the situation.”

“Recently, we have had lots of fear in our schools concerning ICE raids to the point where students aren’t able to be educated,” said another attendee. “They can’t even sit in the classroom because they’re so scared of their mother, their father, their uncle, their auntie, their tias, their tios being taken. “

That same person went on to speak about how this issue impacts all of Grand Rapids.

“It’s a holistic issue, because it’s not only affecting certain families, it is affecting our whole community in education,” they said. “Because guess what, my community is sitting with your community, with your children, who are also being distracted and feeling the secondary trauma of the peers, and so the fact that there is that my phone is ringing off the hook, that I’m getting email after email from families being worried about their children because they’re not sleeping at night, because they’re scared of their friend being deported, or their friend’s parent being deported.”

Representatives from Movimiento Cosecha GR and GR Rapid Response to ICE were in attendance to urge commissioners to adopt policies that would prevent local police from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in arrests, detentions and deportations.

The group’s appearance follows an online campaign that generated 20,000 letters to city officials supporting sanctuary city status in just one week, according to organizers. The push comes amid renewed concerns over potential federal immigration enforcement actions.

“People are going to keep demanding that you guys do something. All I ask is you all stand up and do what’s right,” said another attendee.

The groups highlighted immigrants’ contributions across Grand Rapids’ economy, from agriculture and construction to hospitality and healthcare.

They emphasized that undocumented residents are integral to the city’s daily life, including as parents of schoolchildren and community members.

Newly elected Grand Rapids Mayor David LaGrand spoke at the meeting, addressing the community’s concerns.

“The question for this commission is, what can we do to honor and respect and support the members of our community, and what things are simply not in our power? So we are not the federal government. So there are things that we cannot do,” LaGrand said. “We don’t have an army, we don’t issue passports. We are not the state where this we’re a city, but in that city, there are a couple things we, I think, are incumbent on us. And I think, I think this is the sentiment of the Commission in general. We have an obligation to speak out on this issue and to speak out on it in moral terms, and to do everything in our power to respect, honor and support the members of our community who have built their lives here.”