A group of mainly Catholic-led immigration advocates gathered in Detroit Monday to adopt a slate of policy objectives, with the aim of lobbying state and national candidates to take them up.
With her daughter at her side, a Sterling Heights resident and Strangers No Longer group member named Guadalupe Enriquez addressed more than 200 religious and community leaders to call for granting drivers’ licenses to people in Michigan without authorization from the federal government – something the state banned for unauthorized immigrants in 2007.
“Having a driver's license would help us immensely,” Enriquez said in Spanish. “We could live without so much worry and fear. It would help keep our children focused on their schoolwork, instead of worrying about whether we'll make it home safely.”
Strangers No Longer was founded by Catholic leaders in response to President Donald Trump’s largely unfavorable stance towards immigration at the start of his first term in office in 2017. The group initially advocated only for drivers’ licenses – losing a bid to extend them to people without permanent legal status last year.
Over the last year, members have been convening “circles” of immigrants across the state to better understand what legislative proposals they see as most important to create their platform.
Members of the group adopted the five policy proposals pitched to them by immigrant members like Enriquez, including more oversight of immigration detention centers and clear due-process protections for those held in them. Strangers No Longer also called for lawmakers to pressure local police to stop working with federal immigration officers.
State Attorney General Dana Nessel, in attendance at the meeting, described that cooperation as aiding and abetting illegal actions by federal immigration agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection. That includes wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens, she said.
“If your local law enforcement agency is cooperating with ICE's illegal operations, they could very well open themselves up as a municipality to significant liability concerns,” she said. “Literally in a way that could bankrupt local communities. The federal government has far more legal protections and resources to get lawsuits of this nature dismissed, so plaintiffs will turn to the lowest hanging fruit to exact their comeuppance.”
She said her office is not pursuing such litigation, but said it has been informing local law enforcement across Michigan of the risks of working with ICE or CBP.
At the end of the event, representatives of churches of various denominations as well as community organizations – or, as Strangers No Longer Executive Director Bill O'Brien put it: “From bishops on one hand to a group over in Port Huron that’s just getting started” – “ratified” the policy platform in the style of a political party convention.
"We're not proposing pie-in-the-sky [policies],” he said. “We're proposing things that a governor could do, proposing things that a local police chief could do, things that a county commission could do. They're very doable.”
Strangers No Longer won’t be making political endorsements, leaders said, but the group does plan to find out where candidates vying for office stand on each of the proposals.
