At least 60 Amazon Flex delivery drivers have been detained by ICE across southeast Michigan, People’s Assembly Detroit is reporting.

One person from the group has told the WSWS that while full‑scale workplace raids are not being carried out inside Amazon facilities, drivers are being pulled over as they arrive for their shifts. On several occasions, cars loaded with packages have been left in the street after workers were seized by ICE.

Amazon Flex drivers are gig workers, similar to Uber and Lyft, who deliver Amazon packages from their private vehicles. According to data from the Pew Research Center and consulting firm McKinsey & Company, nearly half of gig workers are immigrants, although this number is even higher in some cities.

The Independent Drivers Guild reports that up to 90 percent of gig workers in New York City are immigrants. It is believed that between 3.5 and 4.5 million immigrants are employed in app-based work such as Uber, DoorDash, Lyft, GrubHub, Instacart or Amazon Flex.

The seizure of Flex drivers is a calculated attack on the entire working class, not just immigrants. Detroit, the historic center of the American car industry and home to large Arab and Muslim communities, is increasingly in the crosshairs of Trump’s immigration gestapo. Autoworkers at General Motors’ Factory Zero in the enclave of Hamtramck were outraged last month when masked ICE began pulling over motorists outside of the factory

On March 1, Amazon Flex driver Maria Zambrano was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Southeast Michigan. She is the partner of fellow Flex driver Edwin Vladimir Romero, who was also seized by ICE at Amazon’s Hazel Park facility on February 2, along with co‑worker Angel Junior Rincon‑Perez.

On March 2, a GoFundMe was launched to support Maria Zambrano and Edwin Romero and their family. Veronica Rodriguez, who started the appeal, emphasized that both workers have lawful status in the US. “They have no criminal past and worked hard to pay their bills. They have lawful legal status in the US,” she says on the GoFundMe page. More than half of ICE’s approximately 70,000 detainees nationwide face no criminal charges at all.

Rodriguez cited a recent letter from Maria:

Edwin is a hardworking and quiet man. He has always been responsible and very devoted to his family. He is the main provider for our household and also financially supports his mother, who depends on him. Since his detention, our family has been going through a very difficult time, both emotionally and financially.

My husband is not a criminal. He is a family man who came to this country seeking safety and an opportunity to work and provide for his family honestly. His absence has affected us deeply. We only ask that his character be considered and that the impact his detention is having on his family be taken into account.

On February 2, ICE agents tracked Romero and co-worker Angel Junior Rincon-Perez to the Hazel Park facility and arrested them on site. Both men hold valid Michigan licenses and work authorization. Both are under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Yet, they were dragged away in front of their coworkers—workers who watched as agents chased one driver from the parking lot into the building.

Amazon security gave ICE full access to the warehouse, citing a supposed “security breach.” The brief lockdown that followed turned the workplace into a trap for immigrant workers.

Both men fled instability in Venezuela in 2023, have asylum requests, and scheduled court hearings. Rincon-Perez is the main breadwinner for a family with several children. He was taken into custody on his way to return an undeliverable package to Amazon. In a letter to the Detroit ICE director, his partner Franyl Huerta wrote,

I beg you, from the bottom of my heart, to please give Angel the opportunity to see his family again, as he is a good father, a good son, and a good brother. He is only looking for a better future for our family, as it is the foundation of our home.

After their arrest, Romero and Rincon-Perez were transferred to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, the largest ICE detention complex in the Midwest, with an 1,800‑bed capacity. The facility, operated by private prison conglomerate GEO Group, held roughly 1,400 detainees as of February 2026, while GEO’s nationwide ICE business helped drive a surge in profits to $254 million in 2025, up from $32 million the previous year.

Families and advocates describe conditions at North Lake that include expired food, delayed medical care, prolonged isolation, and onerous bonds of $15,000–$40,000, sums that are cruelly designed to prevent working-class families from freeing their loved ones. On December 15, Nenko Stanev Gantchev, 56, detained at North Lake died in custody, likely from medical neglect. He was one of four immigrants to die in custody in one week.

There have been other raids at Amazon facilities nationwide. A local TV station reported on one case in Pico Rivera, California, where a driver was chased, thrown to the ground, and detained. NBC reported federal agents detaining multiple drivers in Washington DC, with community videos showing agents grabbing drivers off the street while working. Similar incidents have also been documented in New York.

The New York Times reports that Amazon managers have received centralized guidance to flag workers whose parole, TPS, or other documents were affected, giving them a few days to produce new proof or be suspended and terminated, which immigrant advocates see as an extension of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.

Amazon is deeply enmeshed in the infrastructure of state repression. The Hazel Park raid exposed how quickly company security collaborates with federal agents, transforming the workplace into a hunting ground for immigrant workers under the guise of “exigent circumstances.”

Moreover, Amazon’s vast surveillance and data systems, from warehouse access controls to delivery routing algorithms, are directly compatible with the needs of immigration enforcement. The company’s heavy reliance on contractors and gig workers, many of them immigrants, provides ICE with a concentrated pool of vulnerable laborers who can be detained at or near their jobs with minimal logistical effort and maximum terroristic impact on the broader workforce.

More ICE attacks in Michigan

In Michigan, ICE has intensified operations not only at Amazon facilities but also in working‑class neighborhoods, schools and daycare centers, deliberately spreading fear among immigrant families. Construction workers have been snatched on their way to job sites, as in the case of a Detroit resident Marty, who was grabbed en route to work on December 6. He was shipped to North Lake despite valid identification and family ties.

In recent weeks, there have been multiple arrests in Ypsilanti, including four individuals seized near schools, and a brutal snowbank arrest of worker Byron Martinez in Grand Rapids.

Alcides Caceres, a 23-year-old Detroit worker and business owner, was picked up on January 8. A Cass Tech alumni and Wayne State University graduate, he is DACA eligible and has no criminal record. He has been held by ICE ever since.

Protests continue across Southeast Michigan against these fascistic attacks. One of the most recent took place on Wednesday against a proposed ICE “administrative office” in Southfield. On February 23, an estimated 700-800 people rallied against a proposed detention center in Romulus. Hundreds more have protested in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, Ann Arbor, and Detroit, as well as numerous smaller Michigan cities.

Students have walked out across the state, demanding “ICE Out,” including at Cass Tech, Royal Oak, Plymouth-Canton, Birmingham, Community High School-Ann Arbor, the International Technology Academy in Pontiac, and more.

While local Democratic politicians, including Michigan state senators Stephanie Chang and Mary Cavanagh, have issued letters urging ICE to release Romero and Rincon Perez, and a few city councils have passed resolutions formally limiting cooperation with ICE, the Democrats insist that the only real way to “fight Trump” is to vote for themselves. They aim to conceal the bipartisan framework and funding of “border security” and “law enforcement” that has erected and funded ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Customs and Border Patrol.

A real fight must be organized by the working class, including autoworkers, educators, healthcare workers, Amazon workers, postal workers, technology workers and other sections of the working class. It is the working class that has the power to halt production and stop the operations of ICE and Trump’s Gestapo agents.

Workers in the United Auto Workers and other unions should demand mass meetings in every local to pass resolutions rejecting any collaboration with ICE agents, as Amazon did when it opened its doors for two Amazon Flex workers to be seized in the plant. Workers should prepare strike action in response to any effort to seize their coworkers, and the unions must be committed to the defense of workers and youth.