Detroit: ICE Detains Hundreds of Migrants Mistakenly Crossing Border Bridge into Canada

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reportedly detained hundreds of migrants after trying to reenter the U.S. by mistakenly crossing a one-way bridge to Canada from Detroit.

The detentions occurred on a road leading to the Ambassador Bridge, which NPR described as being “notoriously difficult to navigate, even for locals.”

Signage is confusing, perennial construction in the vicinity doesn’t help, and often Detroiters accidentally drive onto it and into a Customs and Border Protection area.

NPR has been receiving tips about immigrants and their children detained at the office space by the Ambassador Bridge for months – people who accidentally drive onto the toll plaza, as well as migrants seeking asylum in Canada who are turned back and end up detained in these office spaces for extended periods of time. But lawyers with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and ACLU of Michigan were unable to locate people in detention or who had been held there.

ICE typically detains the migrants when they attempt to cross from Canada back into the United States. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has claimed that as many as 213 people have been detained at the bridge, including families, with at least 90 percent of them having taken a wrong turn onto the bridge.

“A wrong turn at the border should not lead to disappearance. It is outrageously cruel and inhumane to hold families at our northern border,” Tlaib said in a statement. “We can’t lose our soul as a country and stand by and let this happen to our neighbors. I urge everyone to vigilantly look out for one another, and continue to speak out against this lawless administration that is separating families and disappearing people.”

Immigration rights activists have denounced the detentions as kidnappings, while ICE agents have said that some of those detained had connections to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

One particular story highlighted by the New York Times explored the case of Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan national, who also took a wrong turn onto the bridge and was reportedly deported with no legal trace.

The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela.

That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world.

But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on a list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday that Prada was sent to El Salvador and had connections to Tren de Aragua, which his family disputed.