GRAND RAPIDS, MI – An activist group based out of Michigan who serve as a vehicle to disrupt Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations is accusing the Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) of “cooperating with ICE” despite standing city policies asserting local law enforcement doesn’t coordinate with federal authorities regarding civil immigration enforcement.
The Grand Rapids-based outfit dubbed GR Rapid Response to ICE touts themselves as a group “trained to come to the aid of immigrants who face arrest, detention, or deportation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” affording illegal aliens faced with imminent arrest an emergency contact number to call to activate a response of agitators who’ll arrive at the scene of their pending apprehension.
Given the activist group’s mission to disrupt federal immigration enforcement, representatives from the group expressed grievances at Grand Rapids City Hall on August 11th over assertions that the GRPD is helping ICE conduct immigration enforcement despite city policies generally prohibiting the act.
Jeff Smith, one of the organizers behind GR Rapid Response to ICE, said at city hall, “The mayor and the chief of police have been repeatedly telling us since January of 2025 that GRPD is not cooperating with ICE, and we’re saying that that’s a bold-faced lie because we are seeing it on a regular basis firsthand.”
The purported cooperation Smith alluded to between ICE and GRPD stemmed from an incident weeks earlier where his group dispatched agitators to a local ICE office where they believed an illegal alien had been detained. Upon Smith’s group seeing a GEO Group van exiting the garage of the ICE office, agitators attempted to block the vehicle from leaving the area, a fact he openly admitted to.
“We were blocking their escape because we see what they’re doing as immoral, unjust, and again creates more family separation and trauma. Part of our work as rapid response is to try to intervene and disrupt ICE’s ability to abduct people from our community,” Smith recalled.
Smith claimed GRPD officers kept his group’s agitators away from the GEO Group van in order to give the vehicle sufficient space to exit the facility, with some officers reportedly threatening to arrest some of the agitators over their alleged conduct. According to Smith, GRPD not allowing his group to physically block vehicles and interfere with federal immigration enforcement is tantamount to GRPD directly coordinating with ICE.
While Grand Rapids does have standing policies which prohibit local law enforcement from asking about a suspect’s immigration status or assisting with/directly executing federal immigration enforcement, Mayor David LaGrand does not claim the “sanctuary city” label.
Furthermore, a GRPD spokesperson has already addressed the framed grievances presented by Smith and his activist group, noting that GRPD officers will respond to activist gatherings where agitators are engaged in unlawful conduct, such as blocking roads.
“GRPD does respond to incidents where there is an element of public safety or criminal activity (for example, trespassing, illegally blocking roads, etc.) which aligns with our law enforcement responsibilities, regardless of the involved parties,” a department spokesperson shared in response to Smith’s allegations.
The statement provided by the GRPD falls in line with the department’s policies surrounding federal immigration enforcement scenarios, which explicitly reads in part, “Officers may provide assistance to federal immigration authorities when there is an emergency posing an immediate danger to the public safety or to the federal agents.”
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