Detroit, MI
Campaigning in Detroit, Trump incites violence against immigrants
With the US presidential election less than five months away, former president Donald Trump and the Republicans are seeking to capitalize on mass anger among workers and youth against President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party over their war-mongering and anti-worker policies. Michigan, with a population of over 10 million people and 15 Electoral College votes, is viewed by both campaigns as a “must win” state.
To this end, the “People’s Convention” organized by Turning Point USA, a fascistic political organization headed by Charlie Kirk, held a political convention in Detroit this weekend. It was one of several major right-wing events recently held, or scheduled to be held, by Trump-aligned elements in Detroit. The week prior, Christian pastor Clay Travis and retired Gen. Michael Flynn, formerly Trump’s national security advisor, hosted the “ReAwaken America” tour in Detroit.
The People’s Convention lasted three days and featured dozens of Republican politicians, media personalities and fascist ideologues, including ex-president Trump.
In his Saturday night speech, Trump hit all of his reactionary talking points, repeatedly attacking immigrants and “globalists.” As he does in almost every appearance, Trump promised that on his first day in office he would close the US-Mexico border and began mass deportations.
Virtually every speaker at the event sang Trump’s praises and repeated variations of his campaign staples, including Republican Representatives Eli Crane (Arizona), Byron Donalds (Florida), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) and Matt Gaetz (Florida). Several of Trump’s January 6, 2021 co-conspirators participated in the event as well, including Alex Jones of InfoWars, Jack Posobiec, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone.
The concluding speech was given on Sunday by Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. After the event concluded, a Trump vice presidential straw poll was conducted among the attendees, with Vance garnering 43 percent of the vote, nearly three times as many as the second place finisher, Senator Tim Scott (South Carolina). Florida Senator Marco Rubio and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum received 7.7 and 7.0 percent, respectively.
Of the over 10 million people who live in Michigan, close to 4 million reside in the Metro Detroit area, which includes the counties of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb. According to 2022 census figures, nearly half a million people in Detroit are African-American. In the 2020 election, Trump sought to invalidate the nearly 800,000 votes cast in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, as part of his bid to retain power after losing to Biden.
According to research by Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, some 40 percent of the population in Metro Detroit is “poor” or “struggling to afford the basic cost of living,” even while holding a job. One of the major costs for workers and their families is housing, with nearly 34 percent of Metro Detroit residents “cost burdened” by housing, meaning they spend over 30 percent of their income on their rent or mortgage payment.
The same research found that as of March 2024, seven percent of Metro Detroit residents did not have health insurance and over 14 percent were receiving food stamps.
While inflation is eating away at workers’ paychecks around the world, Detroit faces one of the highest rates of inflation in the US. According to recently published data by WalletHub, year-to-year inflation in Detroit is 3.5 percent, the fifth highest out of 23 major metropolitan areas studied by the company. Honolulu, Hawaii had the highest rate at 5.2 percent, followed by Dallas at 5 percent, Seattle at 4.4 percent and San Francisco at 3.8 percent.
In a bid to capitalize on the brutal impact of inflation and social cuts under President Joe Biden, Trump held a “Church Roundtable” event at a Black church in Detroit prior to speaking at the Turning Point convention. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Rev. Lorenzo Sewell of 180 Church said he supported neither Biden nor Trump, and was “shocked” to have received a call from the Trump campaign.
Introducing Trump, Sewell said he was “so humbled that you would be here,” adding, “President Obama never came to the hood, so to speak. President Joe Biden, he went to the big NAACP dinner, but he never came to the hood, so thank you.”
Prior to event, the Trump campaign announced the formation of the “Black Americans for Trump” voter outreach group. Members of the group include Rep. Donalds; former Detroit Mayor and convicted fraudster and racketeer Kwame Kilpatrick; rappers Sexyy Red, Kodak Black and 50 Cent; boxer Mike Tyson and former Yankee and Met outfielder Daryl Strawberry.
In his comments, Trump sought to pit worker against worker along the lines of race and immigration status. He blamed Biden for allowing “millions of illegal aliens” to “pour in” and take “your jobs.”
Trump declared that the “Black community” was “getting hurt more by the illegal aliens… That are affecting African-Americans, and after that, the Hispanic Americans, more than any group.”
Repeating his standard fascistic agitation against migrant workers, he added, “We are being inundated with… terrorists at levels we have never seen before.”
Following Trump’s brief remarks, Rev. Sewell said a closing prayer in which he noted that Trump “was charged with 34 felonies, then he raised $53 million in 24 hours and he has the potential to be the 47th president.”
Sewell asked God to “speak to [Trump]… visit him with wisdom… Lift his hands up so that our country perhaps would be great again. And we believe specifically for Black America that you would make Black America great again.”
In its report on Trump’s visit to the 180 Church, the Washington Post wrote that not a single person it interviewed at the event actually attended the church.
On June 15, the same night that Trump spoke at the Turning Point USA conference, a past Thanksgiving dinner guest of Trump’s, neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, had planned to convene the fourth “America First Political Action Conference” at the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit. However, Fuentes wrote on social media Saturday that the event was canceled after the venue called the police on him.
In an interview in the Detroit Free Press, an official with the center said it had been “tricked” by a third party into hosting Fuentes’ fascist conference. In a statement to the newspaper, a spokesman for the venue said:
The event was canceled due to fraudulent, knowing misrepresentation of the true nature of the event by the production company for their client, and our concern of safety for our faculty, employees, tenants, and the surrounding communities. The amount of hate mail we’ve been receiving and terrible things being said towards us by the AFPAC following is disturbing and only affirms our decision as the right one.
The day before his rally was canceled, Fuentes, former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter Jake Shields and other America First “groypers” crashed the Turning Point USA conference. After being quickly escorted out by security, Fuentes held a rally outside the venue, where he praised “the great industrialist Henry Ford” for “exposing the Jewish mafia.”
DETROIT (FOX 2) – Some Detroit officials are shining a light on ICE chases calling for change, saying they are too fast, too risky, and a danger to the community and everyone involved.
The backstory:
On Wednesday council members Denzel Anton McCampbell, Gabriela Santiago-Romero and Detroit Police Commissioner Victoria Camille, sent a letter addressing it to the head of the Department of Homeland Security – Markwayne Mullin.
In the letter they are demanding that ICE ends “dangerous pursuits through residential neighborhoods.”
They cited two pursuits — in May and June — where ICE sped through areas where children played, and both ended in injury.
Both individuals who were being pursued, they say, had no criminal activity – so they’re calling for an end to these chases.
McCampbell spoke about the letter and what they hope to accomplish.
“Talk about immigration law, this is not criminal law. So these chases are happening based on civil issues and endangering our community,” he said. “So we wanted to ensure that we sent a letter for accountability to Homeland Security to demand that they stop this and follow their own rules to keep our neighborhoods safe.”
In the letter, McCampbell, Santiago-Romero, and Camille call on DHS to:
- Cease vehicular pursuits
- Publicly release its most current vehicular pursuit policy
- Confirm key details regarding the May and June incidents
- Share findings from the resulting investigations
- Hold accountable any agents who break the rules.
They say that the majority of individuals targeted in the Detroit operations do not have criminal records, and that no civil immigration objective justifies high-speed chases that endanger the people being pursued, the agents involved, and innocent bystanders, homeowners, and children.
The other side:
FOX 2 reached out to the Detroit Department of Homeland Security Office requesting an interview and we are waiting to hear back.
Read the full letter below:
Dear Secretary Mullin:
We write on behalf of the residents of Detroit’s Districts 6 and 7 to demand that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) immediately stop conducting high-speed vehicular pursuits through our neighborhoods, and that the Department of Homeland Security enforce its own pursuit standards with the seriousness that human life demands. In the span of three weeks, two such pursuits in Detroit have left two people critically injured, damaged residents’ homes and property, and placed children and bystanders in mortal danger. These are not unfounded notions; they happened on our streets in front of families.
On May 19, 2026, a vehicular pursuit and crash involving ICE left Yerlys Moreno López, a Detroit asylum seeker, with a broken knee and other injuries requiring emergency surgery. On June 5, 2026, ICE confirmed its officers pursued a driver on Detroit’s west side near Whitlock Avenue and Warwick Street. The driver, Mohamd Salim Abdessamed, lost control, crashed through a residential fence and garage, was impaled by a fence post, and landed atop two parked vehicles. He was hospitalized in critical condition. The homeowner reported that her garage was knocked off its foundation, and a vehicle on her property was destroyed. According to neighbors who witnessed the event, agents operated unmarked vehicles, with only one having its emergency lights activated. At this time, it is unclear if sirens were activated.
That last detail is not a minor one. Federal regulation at 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(e) defines a lawful immigration pursuit as one carried out in a “designated pursuit vehicle.” A pursuit conducted in an unmarked vehicle without activated lights and sirens does not appear to satisfy the Department’s own regulatory definition. ICE’s own 2012 Emergency Driving Handbook further directs agents to “consider and evaluate critical safety issues posed by emergency driving, including the potential risk of death or serious physical injury to themselves, the general public, and the suspect, and should engage in emergency driving only when they determine that the seriousness of the emergency or the severity of the suspected criminal offense outweighs the risk of death or serious physical injury associated with such driving.” We have seen little evidence that such a weighing occurred in either of the Detroit incidents.
The U.S. Department of Justice discourages the use of unmarked vehicles in pursuits, precisely because of the catastrophic risk to uninvolved bystanders. Most American police departments, including Detroit, prohibit chases for non-violent offenses and permit them only to prevent an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. It is indefensible that federal agents operating on the same residential streets should hold themselves to a lower standard of public safety than the local police who patrol those blocks every day. The overwhelming majority of individuals targeted in these Detroit operations have no criminal record. No civil immigration objective justifies driving a vehicle at high speed past a park where children are playing.
Accordingly, we demand that the Department take the following actions:
1. Immediately direct ICE and HSI personnel operating in Detroit and across the nation to cease vehicular pursuits in residential and populated areas except where there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to a person, consistent with best practices.
2. Confirm in writing whether the agents involved in the May 19 and June 5, 2026, Detroit pursuits complied with 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(e), including the requirement that pursuits be conducted in designated vehicles with activated emergency lights and sirens, and whether unmarked vehicles were used in either pursuit.
3. Publicly release the current ICE and HSI vehicular pursuit policy, as the most recent publicly available guidance dates to 2012.
4. Provide the complete findings of the Department’s investigations into both Detroit incidents, including any after-action review, supervisory authorization records, and any disciplinary or corrective measures taken.
5. Commit to a binding pursuit and use-of-force standard that requires supervisory authorization, prohibits pursuits for non-violent civil immigration matters, and holds agents accountable when they violate it.
Detroit is a community that looks out for its neighbors, and we will not accept a regime in which federal agents treat our streets as a place where bystanders, homeowners, and children are acceptable collateral. The next pursuit may not end with injuries but with a funeral. I urge you to act before it does, and I request a written response within fourteen (14) days of receipt of this letter.
Respectfully,
Denzel Anton McCampbell
Council Member, District 7
Detroit City Council Gabriela Santiago-Romero
Council Member, District 6
Detroit City Council
Victoria Camille
Police Commissioner, District 7
Detroit Board of Police Commissioners
Cc:
The Honorable Rashida Tlaib, U.S. House of Representatives (MI-12)
The Honorable Shri Thanedar, U.S. House of Representatives (MI-13)
The Honorable Gary Peters, United States Senate (MI)
The Honorable Elissa Slotkin, United States Senate (MI)
Watch FOX 2 Detroit Live:
The Source: Information for this report is from an interview with Denzel Anton McCampbell and the letter sent to DHS.
Every seat in the Michigan Senate is up for election this year, and eight of those districts are in Wayne County.
In the 4th, 5th and 8th Districts, only one Republican and one Democrat filed for election, meaning those candidates will automatically be nominated and move on to the November ballot. Here are The Detroit News endorsements in the five contested Senate primaries in Wayne County:
1st District (Southwest Detroit and parts of Downriver, including Taylor, Melvindale and Lincoln Park): Two Detroit Democrats are competing for this seat: Abraham Aiyash and Justin Onwenu.
Aiyash is a former state representative who is hoping to return to the Legislature after a two-year absence. He is a progressive whose policy positions align with Democratic socialists.
Onwenu is an attorney who served the Mike Duggan administration as Detroit’s first Director of Entrepreneurship and Economic Opportunity, helping small businesses get a start in the city. Before attending Columbia Law School, where he was president of the student body from 2023 to 2024, Onwenu worked to combat air and water pollution in Detroit, Ecorse and River Rouge.
In the Senate, he promises to be a supporter of legislation to strengthen neighborhoods by lowering property taxes and investing in infrastructure.
He also supports stronger transparency and ethics rules for lawmakers. Justin Onwenu gets our endorsement in the 1st District Democratic primary.
Patrick O’Connell of Ecorse is unopposed in the Republican primary.
2nd District (Northwest Detroit, Dearborn Heights and part of Dearborn): The district is currently represented by Sylvia Santana, who made an unsuccessful bid to be nominated for the Michigan State University board.
The Democratic primary features two Dearborn residents who are hoping to replace Santana: Erin Byrnes and Abbas Alawieh.
Alawieh describes himself as a political strategist, community organizer and pro-peace advocate. He is supported by the Michigan Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus and aligns with many of its anti-growth positions.
Byrnes is currently a state representative in her second term. Like her opponent, she is well to the left of center on the political spectrum. In the Legislature, she has pushed for utility rate controls.
The two Democrats are similarly positioned. Our choice in the 2nd District is Erin Byrnes, based on her legislative experience.
Harry Sawicki of Dearborn Heights is unopposed in the Republican primary.
3rd District (Detroit, Warren and Madison Heights): The contest to replace incumbent Stephanie Chang has drawn a long list of candidates. The 3rd District starts near Downtown Detroit and stretches north through the center of the city into southern Oakland and Macomb counties.
Eleven Democrats, all from Detroit, are competing in the primary. They are: Mohammad Alam, a Bangladeshi immigrant and Army veteran; LeJuan Council, a property manager and small business owner; John Conyers III, son of the late congressman; LaTanya Garrett, a former state representative; Korey Hall, a former director of community affairs in the Whitmer administration; Adam Hollier, a former state senator; Gary Hunter, a former candidate for Detroit City Council; Kimberly Hill-Knott, former head of the Detroit Climate Action Collaborative; Toinu Reeves, an economist, Abraham Shaw, who owns an auto repair shop, and Eboni Taylor, a community advocate.
There are several interesting and impressive candidates in this race, including Conyers, who just wrote about his father. Garrett has legislative experience, as does Hollier, whom we’ve endorsed in his previous runs for public office.
But we are most impressed with Reeves, a newcomer to politics who brings top-notch credentials to the race. Reeves grew up on Detroit’s east side and is an economist who attended Wayne State University and Dartmouth College.
He serves as chair of the Economic Development Workgroup for Detroit’s District 4 Community Advisory Committee and on the Jefferson-Chalmers Community District Council. He is a former school teacher and autoworker.
Toinu Reeves offers fresh ideas and much-needed skills, and gets our endorsement in the 3rd District Democratic Primary.
Mark Ashley Price is unopposed in the Republican primary.
6th District (Redford Township, Farmington and Farmington Hills): Incumbent Mary Cavanaugh is defending her seat from a challenge from fellow Democrat Stephen Jensen, who shows no signs of a campaign. Both are from Redford.
Mary Cavanaugh, granddaughter of the late Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh, has served her district well and should be renominated for a second term.
Joi Pokerwinski of Redford Township is unopposed in the Republican Party.
12th District (Parts of Wayne, Macomb and St. Clair counties, including Algonac, the Grosse Pointes, St. Clair Shores, Harper Woods, Mount Clemens and New Baltimore): Incumbent Sen. Kevin Hertel of St. Clair Shores is unopposed in the Democratic primary. Five Republicans are competing in their primary to face him in November.
They are: Joseph Backus of St. Clair Shores, a prolific community volunteer who has run unsuccessfully for other offices; Patrick Biange of St. Clair Shores; John Goldwater of New Baltimore, an oil and gas entrepreneur; Eileen Tesch, the former mayor of Algonac who faced recall efforts, and Shelley Wright, a former general contractor and owner of a process serving company who says Donald Trump inspired her to politics.
John Goldwater has experience growing a business and creating jobs. He would also prioritize improving skilled trades training. The father of six is a conservative who describes himself as pro-life and a defender of the Second Amendment.
Our endorsement in the 12th District Republican primary goes to John Goldwater.
Photos by FOX 2 Photog Scott Federspiel
DETROIT (FOX 2) – A 16-year-old moped driver was hospitalized after a crash on Detroit’s west side on Wednesday night.
The backstory:
Detroit police say the teen disregarded a stop sign while going east on Vassar when he collided with a vehicle turning south on Outer Drive at about 9:30 p.m.
Photos by FOX 2 Photog Scott Federspiel
The boy was taken to a nearby hospital where he is listed in critical condition. The driver of the car, a woman in her 30s, was not injured.
The Source: Information for this report is from Detroit police.
Watch FOX 2 Detroit Live:
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