ANN ARBOR, MI — Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney Eli Savit labels recent federal immigration activities as “immorality.”
Savit, a Democratic candidate for Michigan Attorney General, encouraged residents Friday to stand up for their neighbors and against the Trump administration in the wake of recent actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“It is not public safety when we have masked ICE agents attacking bystanders with pepper spray,” Savit said during a protest at the Federal Building in Ann Arbor on Friday, Feb. 20.
“It does not protect public safety when we have parents afraid to take their kids to school in the morning to pick them up in the afternoon,” he said.
Savit joined over 70 student activists and elected officials at the protest, which was organized by the group A2 Against ICE. Activists held signs that read “I Love My Immigrant Neighbors” and “Abolish ICE Today!”
“It is only with all of us standing together, documenting what is going on in our streets, standing up and saying no more, that we will take the country back,” Savit said.
The protest comes after the detention of four residents by federal immigration authorities in Ypsilanti and ongoing ICE actions in Minneapolis.
Hundreds of Community High School students in Ann Arbor recently walked out of classes on Feb. 4, before marching to the same Federal Building people gathered at on Friday, also to protest ICE actions.
Students at high schools across Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti have held similar demonstrations.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, public health official and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, criticized ICE’s recent purchase of a facility in Romulus, which he argues is intended to be turned into what he calls a “concentration camp.”
“ICE is about normalizing paramilitary force on peaceful streets,” El-Sayed said. “When we stand up to say that ICE’s actions … is illegal and immoral, what we are standing up for are the basic foundations of our Constitution itself because that’s what guarantees us the rule of law.”
El-Sayed criticized the Trump administration and claimed ICE is not reformable or retrainable. It must be “abolished immediately,” he said.
“That is our money being spent to terrorize and rip up our own Constitution. That is not acceptable,” El-Sayed said, adding that people have a “moral imperative to act.”
“We will do everything we can within our peaceful means to stand up against tyranny against our neighbors,” he said.
Stella Camerlengo, a University of Michigan junior and co-chair of the U-M College Democrats, called for all elected officials to remain aware of “atrocities abroad and at home.”
“Don’t you dare tell young people to be quiet in a country that was built by stolen labor on stolen land,” said Camerlengo, 20. “I am sick and tired of press releases with no action, of thoughts and prayers with no justice and watching human beings being treated as disposable.”
Young people will hold elected officials accountable “because young people are done waiting,” Camerlengo said. “We are here to make sure that you go further than you ever have before,” she said.
Other political officials in attendance included Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor and Washtenaw County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi.
