I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
El Azteco Restaurant, East Lansing, Mich., where ICE conducted a raid this past weekend. (photo: Todd A. Heywood)
EAST LANSING — Michigan Messenger has obtained the security video from East Lansing Mexican restaurant El Azteco of the arrests there of four employees the morning of Sunday, Oct. 19. The arrests were part of an operation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that occurred Oct. 17-20 across the Lansing area, first reported last weekend in Michigan Messenger.
In all, the federal agents arrested 64 people they said were in the country illegally.
The videos show employees sometime before 11 a.m. preparing to open the restaurant for the day when ICE agents stride into the kitchen unannounced. The restaurant’s security videos show the arrests were carried out without any law enforcement backup, and next to a busy Catholic church. One video shows churchgoers walking past the arrests; another shows the shock of some employees during the course of the raid.
Besides the four arrested, no one was more shocked than the owner of the well-known eatery, Arturo Santa Cruz, a United States citizen. He told Michigan Messenger that he was outraged because all his workers taken away in cuffs are legal workers with documentation, Social Security cards, I-9s, etc. He said that one of his employees arrested in the raid has worked for him for 18 years, another for 10.
A fifth employee of El Az was arrested at home.
The men arrested in the El Az raid are being held at the William Dickerson Detention Facility in Hamtramck. The female arrested is reportedly being detained in Battle Creek’s Calhoun County Correctional Center.
East Lansing officials joined city of Lansing officials in publicly stating they had no forewarning about the ICE operations that included the El Az raid.
City Manager Ted Staton and Police Chief Tom Wibert said they first heard of the ICE operation in a story in Tuesday’s State News, the MSU student newspaper. “It would have been nice to get a courtesy call,” Wibert said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.
“We’ll make sure we register our concerns,” Staton said. “I’m going to rely on the police chief to establish that contact.”
[Ed. note: at the time this article was published, a much longer video was still in reproduction. We'll post that video as soon as available.]
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