DEXTER TOWNSHIP, MI — A local couple is speaking out after a concerning encounter with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside a Michigan courthouse.Dexter Township residents Ramiro Martinez and Laura Sanders, both U.S. citizens and longtime immigrant rights advocates, said they were at the 35th District Court near Plymouth on Tuesday, April 1, to support an immigrant living in the country without legal permission. The man was there for a traffic ticket after getting pulled over by Canton Township Police.Martinez, a 48-year-old handyman, landscaper and farmer, said he’s originally from Mexico but has been a U.S. citizen through his marriage to Sanders for several years. At one point on Tuesday, he went outside the courthouse to check on his dog in the car and was surrounded by several ICE agents, he said.He told agents they had the wrong guy, but they aggressively ordered him to get on the ground, he said. They didn’t allow him to show ID to prove he’s a citizen and instead they grabbed him, put him face down on the pavement, handcuffed him and took out his wallet, he said.Ramiro Martinez flips through documents with proof of his U.S. citizenship on Friday, April 4, 2025.Jackson Ranger | MLive.comBefore he was taken down, one agent pulled out a Taser but ultimately did not use it, Martinez said, saying he saw the Taser coming and started to bend over and that’s when two agents grabbed him.Agents used their body weight to keep him pinned to the pavement, he said, recalling one may have had a knee on his legs. He continued telling them they were detaining the wrong person, but they just laughed as they started going through the personal items in his wallet, taking out things like his Costco membership card, he said.“I said, ‘What the hell is funny, man? The ID is what you need. That’s it,‘” Martinez said.The encounter lasted about five minutes, he said, and he was free to go after agents eventually realized he was telling the truth. He recalls one saying, “Oh, s----, he’s a citizen.”The agents never apologized for the mixup, Martinez said. Ramiro Martinez poses for a portrait on Friday, April 4, 2025. When he was being apprehended by ICE, Martinez said "I was so mad the way they basically tried to dehumanize me even when I was saying you have the wrong person."Jackson Ranger | MLive.comThe immigrant Martinez and Sanders were there to support was later arrested by ICE after leaving the courthouse, though he was treated better, they said, and they think that’s because they were recording it on camera.ICE acknowledged the incident in which Martinez was mistaken as the target of an enforcement operation.Any U.S. immigration officer has authority to question, without warrant, any person believed to be an alien concerning his or her right to be in the country, an ICE spokesperson said.“As part of its routine operations, ICE arrests aliens who commit crimes and other individuals who have violated our nation’s immigration laws,” the spokesperson said, saying ICE may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request ID to establish identity.Martinez said he wasn’t physically injured, but he was left emotionally shook and a nice pair of cowboy boots he was wearing were left scratched up.“I was so mad,” he said.Sanders, a University of Michigan social work instructor, mental health therapist and Dexter Township trustee, said she’s also mad and thinks what happened is part of a larger problem.Laura Sanders poses for a portrait on Friday, April 4, 2025. "We're very disturbed by everything that happened that day, including the amount of agents, the paramilitary garb," Sanders said. "It was intimidating."Jackson Ranger | MLive.com“They straight up racially profiled Ramiro,” she said. “They assumed that he was a suspect because he was Latino. He could have taken his license out. Instead, they threatened to Taser him and made him get to the ground.”Dingell calls ICE’s mistaken detainment of U.S. citizen ‘deeply disturbing’Sanders, co-founder of the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, said she and Martinez have started a new group called MIRA, which stands for Movement for Immigrant Rights Action and it’s also the Spanish word for “look.”They’re now looking into what’s happening in the Plymouth-Canton area and say they’re seeing a pattern of police pulling over and ticketing immigrants with Mexican driver’s licenses who then have to go to the 35th District Court where ICE agents may be waiting like they were on Tuesday.“We have numerous calls from guys who have been stopped and they have valid Mexican driver’s licenses, which there is a treaty between Mexico and the United States that says that at least temporarily you can drive with a valid Mexican driver’s license,” Sanders said. “But they’re stopping them, and when they show a valid Mexican driver’s license, they are ticketing them.”ICE declined to comment on whether it’s collaborating with local police or the court.They’re making it so it’s not safe to go to court and pursue justice, Sanders said.There were several ICE vans outside the courthouse Tuesday and agents waited hours to apprehend the 26-year-old man from Mexico who has a four-month-old baby with his wife and no criminal record, Sanders said.ICE wouldn’t say where he was being taken and his family and supporters have struggled to reconnect with him, Sanders said, though they do know the jail he’s at now while facing deportation and he eventually was able to speak with his wife recently.“The red tape of trying to communicate with somebody once they are disappeared into the immigration jail system is absolutely horrendous,” Sanders said. “We have been struggling since Tuesday to try to visit him and still nobody has visited him.”They’re heartbroken, Sanders said.The man’s situation is similar to those of others who want to join relatives who are here legally, but the immigration system is broken, Sanders said.For example, she said, Martinez’s father, who had a green card, petitioned for Martinez to come to the U.S. with him back in 1995 when Martinez was 19. Martinez’s sister, who was on the same petition, just finally got approved to join her family in the U.S. last year after waiting 29 years in Mexico, Sanders said.Ramiro Martinez, left, and Laura Sanders, right, pose for a portrait on Friday, April 4, 2025.Jackson Ranger | MLive.comIf Martinez hadn’t crossed the border to come here, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen through marriage, he also could have waited 29 years, Sanders said.“That’s how complicated and backed up and broken the immigration system is,” she said.People don’t want to have to leave their home country, but they come out of desperation to find work and to flee violence in places where gangs have taken over, Sanders said.MIRA, which works on issues like local police policies where they intersect with immigration, doesn’t have a formal office or phone line yet, Sanders said, but WICIR still has an urgent response line that has operated since 2008 at 734-355-2707 for people facing urgent immigration issues.Want more Ann Arbor-area news? 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