Federal immigration agents swept through a stretch of east Dearborn near Warren Avenue and Mead Street around 8 a.m. Saturday, arresting three people in an operation that local police say they were never told about in advance. By Saturday afternoon, Dearborn police still did not know who had been detained or why.
The operation was carried out by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents, according to the Detroit Free Press. Dearborn police said federal authorities gave the department no advance notification or coordination before agents moved in, and that federal officials only reached out to the department after the three arrests had already been made.
As of Saturday afternoon, police said they still had not received the names of those arrested or the reasons behind the arrests. ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Detroit and the Department of Homeland Security had not responded to the newspaper's requests for comment on the operation by that point either.
Police Chief Calls for Better Coordination
Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin said communication between federal agencies and local law enforcement supports public safety and helps answer residents' questions and concerns. He encouraged federal authorities to loop in Dearborn police whenever they conduct operations within the city, and the department said it is now seeking more information from federal authorities about Saturday's action.
The lack of a heads-up echoes a similar episode last month in neighboring Canton Township. On Oct. 20, Hulsing Elementary School went into shelter-in-place around 10 a.m. after ICE activity was reported nearby, the station notes. Canton police and Plymouth-Canton Community Schools said at the time that they had no advance knowledge of, or involvement in, that operation either.
Conflicting Accounts of the Canton Lockdown
Accounts of how long students and staff were sheltered in place during the Canton incident differ. ClickOnDetroit reported the lockdown lasted about an hour, while the Detroit Free Press reported in its own coverage that students and staff remained sheltered for more than an hour. U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell said afterward that the local police department was not notified in advance, adding that she had been in contact with ICE, which she said acknowledged there were issues with that day's enforcement activities.
Patch reported separately that five people were arrested in the Canton-area operation, including one person with a final order of removal, and that the arrests did not occur on school property and no ICE agents entered the building.
Part of a Statewide Surge
Both incidents land against a backdrop of sharply rising immigration enforcement across Michigan. ICE arrested 504 people statewide in July alone, a 43% jump from July 2025, according to MLive. That worked out to an average of 16 arrests a day in Michigan during July, a daily pace nearly 450% higher than two years earlier, the outlet reported.
Through Aug. 5, ICE had made 3,122 arrests in Michigan for the year, already nearing the 3,336 total recorded for all of 2025, per MLive's reporting. Nationally, the agency arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, its highest monthly total under the current administration, according to the same report.
For now, Dearborn police say they are still waiting on basic answers about who was taken into custody Saturday morning and why. Residents in the Warren Avenue and Mead Street area, meanwhile, are left with the same uncertainty that followed Canton's school lockdown last month — a federal operation that unfolded in their neighborhood without local authorities being told it was coming.
