Family of ICE detainee offers mutual aid for fellow immigrants

Photo: Fernando Ramirez (middle, wearing Fresno State shirt) embraces his family after his release from ICE detention in Baldwin on Jan. 10.

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

One week after Fernando Ramirez was released from the massive federal immigrant detention center in Baldwin, he sat beside his eldest grandchild Liam on Jan. 17 in a family member’s home in Grand Rapids and placed a lit candle in the 13-year-old boy’s birthday cake.

“You are affectionate and charismatic. I wish you everlasting happiness,” the abuelo told the newly minted teenager in Spanish as a smile spread across the boy’s face and he valiantly held back tears. Each member of the Ramirez family bestowed Liam with a candle and words, but he shares a special bond with Fernando.

For more than three months Liam, his younger sister Ximena, and their mother Samantha had visited Fernando once a week for sessions of 90 minutes at the North Lake Processing Center an hour from their home. During each visit, the kids would playfully stroke his growing beard. Before Fernando was taken by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) this past fall, the 59-year-old native of Mexico sported a goatee.

Fernando, who had no criminal record other than a speeding ticket, was driving a semi-truck when he was stopped on Sept. 29, 2025, at a weigh station in northwest Indiana by state troopers. Fernando had crossed the border undocumented to San Diego at age 19 and moved to Grand Rapids at age 31. He worked for decades in West Michigan for a company that cleaned local big box stores before he realized his childhood dream of driving a big rig. For the past three years he drove semis, first transporting fruit to California and lately staying closer to home at the request of his family.

Aware of the dangers posed by ICE’s ramped-up presence in Chicago during “Operation Midway Blitz” last fall, Fernando had agreed with his daughters Samantha and Nahomi that the late September trip would be his last.

After he was apprehended, Fernando spent a couple days in Chicago’s Broadview detention center, before he was moved to Baldwin. The facility is owned by the private, for-profit prison corporation Geo Group on a contract with ICE. North Lake currently holds nearly 1,500 detainees, making it the largest in the Midwest. Were it to reach capacity of 1,800 prisoners, North Lake would rank among the largest nationwide—a key weapon in the Trump administration’s campaign to deport a record number of immigrants. Many of those held in Baldwin through the fall and winter were arrested during ICE’s siege of Chicago.

Like Fernando, 86 percent of detainees at North Lake do not have criminal records, according to ICE’s own data.

The Baldwin prison sits in rural Lake County, one of the poorest in Michigan—equidistant between Grand Rapids and Traverse City and a mere 75 minutes from the wealth and tranquility of Leelanau County. North Lake immediately became the biggest employer and contributor to the local tax base when it reopened in June 2025.

Since then the facility has drawn scrutiny for the death of a Bulgarian on Dec. 15 who operated a small business in Chicago prior to his arrest. Inmates have complained of overcrowding and not enough staff. Their families on the outside have heard rumors and worried about tuberculosis, chickenpox and COVID-19 outbreaks. Detainees have also reported of cold temperatures, intermittent electricity, and lack of warm meals for dinner. Immigrants apprehended by ICE are disproportionally young, working-age men who struggle to eat enough calories if they miss the early-morning call for breakfast.

The detainee population has included a global mix: Mexicans, Central Americans and South Americans; Middle Easterners, Eastern Europeans, Africans, Chinese, even the children of Hmong refugees whose parents served with the U.S. military during the “secret war” in the 1970s. Some were seized at work, some in their homes, some while traveling to school to pick up their children.

Reaction to the presence of the prison among Lake County locals has been mixed. Some welcome the jobs and economic boost to area restaurants and gas stations. Others shudder at their community profiting from an industry built at the expense of immigrants, mostly people of color. Baldwin and the nearby rural resort town of Idlewild have a sizable Black minority who find unseemly parallels between the federal government’s current demonization of immigrants and historic oppression of African Americans.

“People are saying [this prison is] about economics and creating jobs, but you’re running up one group of people,” Lake County Commissioner Clyde Welford, who is Black, told me last spring, not long before the prison opened.

​“These people have a right to flee a burning house. … some of them were fleeing atrocities and gangs and people being murdered. They wanted a better way of life. These [Geo Group] guys are going to make money on these people.”

From truck driver to comandante

Fernando immediately became a leader and advocate for fellow prisoners in his pod at North Lake—most of whom were Hispanic. Older than most, and fluent in English, he interpreted for them, bonded with them, encouraged them to eat meals, remain active and avoid sleeping too much. Affable and warm, he shared stories with them and used humor to keep their spirits high.

One young detainee from Columbia called Fernando “comandante”—a nickname that stuck. On visits and phone calls with Samantha and Nahomi, he described these young men in his pod as his familia.

He stuck up for them, too. One day when an impatient guard yelled at the detainees to hurry down a corridor and through a door that was still locked, Fernando confronted the worker. “We’re not your livestock,” he said in a loud voice. The sentry grew angry and threatened to send Fernando to an isolation cell. Another employee stepped in and calmed the situation.

According to Fernando, most guards at North Lake showed empathy and kindness toward the immigrant detainees and didn’t treat them like criminals. The Ramirez family said that the minority of workers who lacked compassion usually turned their name badges around so inmates and visiting families couldn’t identify them.

Fernando’s familia was broken up when staff moved him into a new section of the prison for detainees with diabetes. He said that conditions in that pod were colder and dirtier, and he received his meals later in the day, which stressed his blood sugar levels. Nevertheless, he took as a “sign from God” that maybe someone else needed to take his place with the familia.

The comandante spent the holidays separated from his prison family and his real family. Detainees were given turkey legs to eat for Thanksgiving. On Christmas Day Fernando received a chicken leg for lunch, and because the kitchen staff didn’t work in the evening, he was given a cold turkey sandwich and apple for dinner.

Advocating for immigrant families

Samantha and Nahomi quickly realized that they could play a critical role in supporting not just their father but his fellow detainees at North Lake. They lived a relatively short distance from Baldwin and could visit Fernando each week—unlike some families who didn’t have the transportation or the time off work, or they didn’t feel safe driving across state lines into the heart of Michigan during a time of heightened fears.

The sisters helped members of Fernando’s familia inside the prison walls reconnect with their own families. (Some detainees were separated from their cell phones when they were arrested; they hadn’t memorized the numbers of their loved ones.) They interpreted for family members who didn’t speak English, and sometimes phoned the North Lake staff to share important medical information. The Ramirez sisters facilitated donations into detainees’ commissary accounts so they could buy snacks. When one of Fernando’s friends posted bail and was released, the sisters picked him up at the facility and gave him room and board until he could secure transportation back to his home community. During visitations they comforted other families who broke down when the 90-minute sessions ended.

“It’s emotional to be with your loved one and then see them walk away again. It’s heartbreaking,” said Nahomi Ramirez. “I’ve witnessed mothers pulling their tiny children away from their dad. I’ve seen young men, in their early 20s, crying and chasing after their dad when it’s time to leave.”

The sisters initially collaborated on the Facebook page “Reencuentros de la Luz,” which is dedicated to helping Chicago-area families reconnect during and after detentions in immigration facilities. Then late last year they decided to start their own page, called “Raíces Migrantes” to help families in West Michigan whose loved ones are detained by ICE—many of them at the North Lake facility in Baldwin.

Since launching in December, Samantha and Nahomi have used “Raíces Migrantes” to network with other mutual aid organizations—such as No Detention Centers in Michigan, Indivisible Greater Grand Rapids, Kent County Indivisible, Movimiento Cosecha GR, and a local retired pastor—to offer advice and bridge language barriers for families of detainees.

They have also post heartwarming videos on Facebook of family reunifications following the release of a prisoner.

“The reunion videos are important for people to see what separations are doing to families,” said Nahomi. “Also to humanize the person who’s being taken by ICE. People need to see that this is a person. They have kids at home who are waiting for them. A brother, a sister, a mom who worry about them.”

The sisters also serve as dispatchers who network with allies that employ a phone tree through the Signal app to coordinate rides for those released on bond from North Lake. Some detainees have been set free at odd times and at an hour’s notice outside the rural facility, with no easy way to travel to Chicago or Detroit, or cities further afield.

“Every day we have volunteers ready to go,” said Samantha. “Someone might pick up a person from the Baldwin facility and drive them to Grand Rapids. Someone else drives them to Michigan City. Then someone else drives them to Chicago. I have three people on my list who need to go to New York, Ohio, or Georgia.”

The sisters estimate they have helped dozens of detainees at North Lake either get home or reconnect with loved ones.

“North Lake welcomes you”

I joined Samantha and her children on a visit to North Lake on the day after Christmas—which turned out to be about two weeks before Fernando was released on bond—following the filing of a habeas corpus lawsuit. The roads south from Traverse City were slick with ice, and a layer of sparkling hoar frost covered the concertina wires above the prison walls so that the facility camouflaged with the wintry forests.

For the Ramirez family the 90-minute visit seemed routine—a weekly ritual. We left our keys, phones, and writing utensils in a locker at the reception desk, walked through several sets of interlocking doors and secure hallways, past a control room with a large dry erase board that listed numbers of detainees, and finally into the reception area, where we sat in white plastic chairs around one of 18 tables. The room’s capacity is 75 people.

A young guard sitting at a desk hesitated for a moment, then leant me a small pen. I put it to use with my notepads I had carried into the prison in my back pocket.

Fernando was waiting for his daughter and grandchildren with a smile and open arms. He wore a dark blue button-down short-sleeved shirt, blue pants, white socks and blue slippers. The kids stroked his beard before borrowing Samantha’s credit card and visiting the vending machine for Pepsi, peanuts, and chips. Unlike most days, the vending machine was full, Samantha said. Behind us, in the corner of the room, staff had recently added a kids’ play area of red, blue, yellow and green sponge tiles.

“We talk about everything and nothing” to pass the time inside, Fernando told me.

I asked him what message he wanted to share with Americans outside the prison walls.

“I’m not a criminal,” he responded in perfect English after a thoughtful pause. “I have worked hard here for 37 years. This country needs people to drive trucks, to do this work. We contribute to society, we pay taxes, but we don’t get benefits.

“I don’t want to be taken back to Mexico in chains and shackles.”

Samantha jumped into our conversation.

“We were raised to be patriotic, to pledge allegiance to the flag at our school. We believed in the words ‘liberty and justice for all’,” she said before her voice trailed off.

Fernando admitted that he cried during and after the first couple weekly visits with his family, but now he had grown used to it. Samantha added that first-time visitors always shed more tears.

I glanced around the room and saw a young couple seated across the table from each other, their eyes locked in an emotional trance. Over there a large family shared laughs as an elderly woman told stories. Over here two middle-aged men looked down at the table, as if pondering moves on a chess board.

Samantha said that she recently saw a pregnant woman visiting her partner here, talking through logistics as she prepared to be a single mother.

As the 90 minutes wound down, people around the room rose slowly from their chairs. Fernando grabbed a handful of peanuts from Liam’s bag because he knew their time together was over. He kissed his daughter and grandchildren.

“Bye papa. Adios. I got you a Christmas present, but you won’t get it until you leave here,” she said as we left through the interlocking doors.

As we walked down the hallway, the young woman who had shared an intimate moment with her detained partner began to weep. Samantha put an arm around her shoulder and introduced herself in Spanish.

Before we exited into the prison’s reception area, I looked back and saw a dry erase board standing sentinel in a hallway with a map of Michigan’s lower peninsula drawn on it, a star over Lake County, and the words “North Lake welcomes you.”