More than 200 immigrants have been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge port of entry since January of this year, according to information obtained by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s (D-Detroit) office.
The number of detainees — which only reflects data through March 21, Tlaib's office said — has raised alarms among immigrant rights advocates and attorneys who say CBP is not equipped for long-term detentions. They also report that people held there, including undocumented families with their U.S. citizen children, have been denied access to legal counsel or the right to contact their country of origin’s consulate while detained.
It’s a “brand new situation” when it comes to holding people without legal immigration status in long-term detention there, according to Michigan Immigrant Rights Center attorney Ruby Robinson. He said this wasn’t the case under previous presidential administrations.
“What we're seeing now is people held there [at the Ambassador Bridge] for days,” Robinson said. “And during that time, no one knows where you are. From our client's experience, they didn't have access to a lawyer.”
According to data obtained by Tlaib during a March 21 site visit, 90% of the people who went on to be detained at the Ambassador Bridge arrived there by taking the wrong exit off I-75 in southwest Detroit. That exit, once taken, leads directly to the bridge’s plaza with no way to turn around. As a result, drivers are then forced to proceed to Canada. Non-U.S. citizens or others without proper legal identification are then sent back to the U.S. side by Canadian authorities, where they are detained by CBP.
While specific information about detainees and their whereabouts can be hard to come by, several specific cases have raised serious concerns for immigrant advocates. In March, a Guatemalan national on a Costco run with her two U.S. citizen daughters was detained there for five days and “held in a windowless office space, in a one-story building between the toll plaza and the bridge, with no access to legal counsel or communication with her consulate,” according to NPR.
And the New York Times reported this week that in January, Venezuelan national Ricardo Prada Vasquez was detained and held at the bridge before being taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. From there, he was put on a fast track to deportation, but his whereabouts are currently unclear — according to The Times, Prada’s name didn't appear on any listed deportation flights or other location records. (On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said that Prada had been deported to El Salvador and is being held in a notorious super-maximum security prison where the Trump administration has arranged to send some deportees it accuses of having criminal gang connections.)
One of the biggest issues immigration attorneys are encountering is a lack of access to detainees. Robinson said that he’s now encountered this multiple times with people being held at the Ambassador Bridge, despite repeated attempts to reach them.
Complicating that further is that in some cases, it’s unclear whether specific people are even in CBP custody, and where they’re located.
“If someone was held for a couple of days in CBP and then transferred to ICE, you're looking at weeks that can go by where no one knows where you are,” Robinson said. “You haven't had contact with a lawyer, and then you're just being fast-tracked so you don't have that access to legal counsel, but you're less able to have your case heard. And then, you might be summarily deported or moved to another ICE detention site outside of Michigan and further from family.”
On Wednesday, a CBP spokesman said via email that the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE locator can be used to track individuals who have been in CBP custody for over 48 hours. But Robinson said he’s now encountered multiple situations where people being held by CBP don’t show up there for days or longer.
“People are calling county facilities to find out, did this person die? Where did they disappear to?” Robinson said. “And so as scary as it is for the person inside, it's also scary for family members and advocates on the outside.”
Another concern flagged by Tlaib and others is family separation. A CBP spokesman said Wednesday that he was only aware of two instances where this occurred, and in one of those cases the mother relinquished her U.S. citizen children voluntarily after several days of detention.
But according to Tlaib’s office, one family — also with two U.S. citizen children — was detained together for over 12 days. Immigration authorities claim that both parents are “known Tren de Aragua,” a notorious Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has accused many Venezuelan nationals of having affiliations with —in some cases, with little to no evidence to support that claim.
In that case, the children appear to have been separated from their parents and their location is currently unknown, said the Michigan Immigration Rights Center’s Christine Sauve. “We do not know what happened to those children,” she said. “So we are concerned that these detentions might be resulting in family separations that are going unreported.”
Sauve said the situation is exacerbated by the fact that the Trump administration has largely eliminated much of the immigration system’s oversight infrastructure, such as the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within the Department of Homeland Security. “What’s happening from January 2025 moving forward is different and is more harmful than what previously existed,” she said.
CBP disputes some elements of Tlaib’s information. For one, a spokesman called the claim of 213 immigration detentions at the Ambassador Bridge “not completely accurate.”
“While CBP did encounter just over 200 aliens from Jan. 20 to March 21, only approximately half of those were detained and turned over to ICE after CBP secondary processing was complete,” the agency said. “When Rep. Tlaib visited the Port of Detroit in March, there were no individuals being detained at our facilities.”
The statement goes on to say that a “top priority for CBP is to minimize the duration of any detention, with detention times being influenced by operational requirements, case complexity, and other factors. However, individuals’ choices and legal violations contribute significantly to the necessity of detention. CBP facilities are intended for short-term detention, and individuals are either transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or released when legally appropriate.
“When individuals violate statutes, their choices make them subject to detention and removal. CBP remains unwavering in its mission to safeguard the United States and uphold federal law. CBP will continue to enforce the laws of this country with integrity and accountability.”
But attorney Robinson said that doesn’t accurately reflect the severity of what he’s seeing on the ground, which is a disturbing escalation of immigration enforcement without the due process protections afforded to all people in the United States, including non-citizens.
“Now people are also being detained at CBP sites, but it's happening quietly and people are disappearing and no one knows about it,” he said. “We don't think that taking that wrong turn at the border should result in disappearance.”
