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In just the first two months of President Donald Trump’s term, immigration officials have detained over 200 people, including children and U.S. citizens, at a bridge in Michigan where it is common for people to accidentally cross the border into Canada, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) reported on Thursday.
Last month, Tlaib visited an immigrant jail where Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is holding and “disappearing” people who cross the Ambassador Bridge, in Detroit, a one-way toll road.
Between January 20 and March 21, CBP has detained at least 210 people this way, Tlaib discovered, with over 90 percent of them having crossed the bridge by accident, taking the wrong turn on the road — a mistake frequently made by people living in the area, locals say. Tlaib said in a press conference that advocates in Michigan have long called for better signage and directions around the bridge.
Immigration advocates say that the immigrant jail is not built to hold people long term, and that officers have denied detainees proper medical care, food, and access to legal counsel.
One immigrant detained there, a man from Venezuela, attempted to die by suicide while at the facility last month, but was stopped by CBP offers. He was later taken to a different facility contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Officials claim he is part of a gang, Tren de Aragua, but the administration has been caught in lies about the gang in its attempts to justify its mass deportation campaign.
“A wrong turn at the border should not lead to disappearance. It is outrageously cruel and inhumane to hold families at our northern border,” Tlaib said in a statement. “We can’t lose our soul as a country and stand by and let this happen to our neighbors. I urge everyone to vigilantly look out for one another, and continue to speak out against this lawless administration that is separating families and disappearing people.”
Border agents have detained U.S. citizens for accidentally crossing the border at Ambassador Bridge.
On March 8, for instance, Sarahi, identified by only her first name for fear of retaliation, was driving with her two children and brother to Costco. But they accidentally entered the Costco in Windsor, Ontario, into the GPS, rather than a Costco stateside, and the GPS directed them to go on Ambassador Bridge to get there.
Immigration agents detained Sarahi and her family for five days; Sarahi and her brother are undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, while her daughters are U.S. citizens. Her daughters are very young, aged 1 and 5 years old. They were held in a windowless room, in an office building between the toll plaza and the bridge, NPR reported last month, and were not allowed access to legal counsel. They were also denied adequate food, first aid when the children fell ill, and diapers for the baby. Sarahi said the ordeal “felt like a kidnapping.”
The long-term detentions at Ambassador Bridge are new, having just started under the Trump administration, Tlaib found. At the time of her visit on March 21, 12 families had been detained there so far; officials held one family there for over 12 days, including two children who are U.S. citizens.
Tlaib, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) and the ACLU of Michigan are calling for an end to the practices seen at the Ambassador Bridge facility, including CBP’s “secret detention” of people and the improper use of CBP sites for long-term detention. They are also pushing for the passage of legislation to ensure that those detained by immigration authorities are afforded proper rights like due process and access to legal counsel.
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