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On April 15, four sheriffs in northwest lower Michigan jointly issued a press release that questioned Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home executive orders at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in Michigan. It happened to fall on the same day that demonstrators planned “Operating Gridlock”, their first of what became several protests at the State Capitol in Lansing against Whitmer’s orders. State Representative Jack O’Malley and his staff helped the sheriffs organize and write the release.

The meals, the donations, the hugs kept arriving—from neighbors, from friends, from the community at large. The door never stopped opening and the telephone never stopped ringing for an immigrant family who has lived in Leelanau County for nearly two decades but faced the specter early this spring of being torn apart by the politics of U.S. immigration enforcement.