The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is suing the federal government on behalf of eight people currently held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The civil rights group argues that these undocumented immigrants — many of whom have lived here for over a decade or were brought here as children — are no threat to the public.

33-year-old Jose Daniel Contreras-Cervantes is a Mexican national and has been in custody since a Macomb County traffic stop back in August. He has leukemia that requires daily medication.

Lupita Contreras is an American citizen and Jose’s wife. Their three children are also citizens. She says he’s not getting the care he needs.

“For 22 days, Jose did not receive his medication, which he is to take daily for his leukemia,” Contreras said. “Lapses in his medication and medical treatment can cause severe symptoms, including damage to his vision, infections and the loss of his life.”

Contreras-Cervantes is currently held at the newly-reopened North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin.

The ACLU wants a judge to release the eight detainees while their immigration cases go through the court.

The Trump Administration ended a bond program for people awaiting their hearing. The Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are opting to jail undocumented immigrants, oftentimes seeking to deport them without due process.

Many times, immigrants showing up for scheduled court hearings have been taken into custody.

ACLU of Michigan Senior Staff Attorney Miriam Aukerman says judges should have the final say over how these people are detained.

“In this country, due process is fundamental,”Aukerman said. “We don’t just lock people up and throw away the key. Rather, judges decide who should be behind bars. That is true for citizens and non-citizens.”

Another man, Fredy De Los Angeles-Flores, has lived in the U.S. for 15 years, but not legally. However, he is the sole caregiver of his 13-year-old U.S. citizen son.

The ACLU of Michigan has already successfully petitioned to get one man, Juan Manuel Lopez-Campos, released on bond after being detained at the Monroe County Jail.

For the Macomb County Sheriff’s office, Commander Jason Abro told WDET that it is common practice for deputies to inform Customs and Border Patrol when an undocumented immigrant is taken into custody. In Contreras-Cervantes’ case, he was pulled over for speeding, but arrested for not having a valid driver’s license.

Commander Abro says the Macomb County Sheriff’s office is not actively aiding ICE investigations and are not a part of the federal Section 287(g) immigration enforcement program.

Aukerman says the change in policy is meant to punish people who are seeking a better life in the U.S.

“This directive is specifically designed to force people to give up their claims for immigration relief and leave their families behind,” Aukerman said.

“The cruelty of this new directive is not an accident. Cruelty is the point.”

Black leaders in Detroit want a change in the city’s Congressional representation.

The U.S. House seat is currently held by businessman Shri Thanedar. State Representative Donavan McKinney is challenging him in the 2026 Democratic primary in the 13th District.

After Thanedar’s election in 2022, Detroit—the country’s largest majority-Black city —was left without representation by an African American.

Following redistricting, Congresswoman and native Detroiter Rashida Tlaib was elected to the 12th District.

The multi-millionaire Thanedar was able to win the Democratic primary in 2022 against eight opponents.

Wayne County Executive Warren Evans says narrowing the field will make things more difficult for Thanedar this time around.

“I’ve been advocating for at least four years for a change—an African American—to lead the 13th congressional district,” Evans said. “You have to connect with the communities that you serve. And the big problem we have now is that connection is not there.”

Thanedar refutes that he isn’t involved in his district and often highlights how much money came to the city during the Biden Administration.

Making what she calls a rare endorsement, former Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence is also advocating for voters to rally around McKinney.

“Why would I endorse against a sitting member of Congress? It breaks my heart that we, the people, have not seen our voices in the House,” Lawrence said. “We have not had someone who understands [us].”

“Of all the things that have been happening, have you heard from the person who’s sitting in that seat now? No. Do you have any confidence that when we’re fighting and we’re trying to push through this madness, that you have a fighter on your hands? Donavan is my fighter,” Lawrence said.

Affordability and accessibility

McKinney was elected to the state house as a progressive in 2022. In running for Congress, he has secured the endorsement of Tlaib and the rest of the Justice Democrats as well as Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

Lowering costs for working class people is the basis for his platform. That includes lowering car insurance and child care. McKinney is a father of three kids all under the age of four – including a newborn. He says he has a salary that’s twice the median for his district, and yet the costs are too high.

“We can only afford – off my state house salary – to put our oldest child into childcare,” McKinney said. “Childcare costs for us cost more than our mortgage. It is unbelievable.”

“If I’m struggling living paycheck to paycheck, just imagine what other folks across the district have to go through, day in and day out.”

In his own endorsement speech, Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist laid out why he thinks McKinney is the right person for the moment.

“[This moment] demands the leadership that harkens back to the progressive vision for Congress that has always emanated from the city of Detroit—when we first had a Black caucus,” Gilchrist said. “The vision for that came from a Black congressman from Detroit. There is something missing in Congress, not having black leadership from Detroit.”

“But the thing about a hole is we can fill it.”

It’s been another violent year in America. There’s been a renewed focus on political violence following the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the attacks on Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota.

Jacob Ware studies terrorism for the Council on Foreign Relations and is the co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far Right Terrorism in America.

In an interview with Detroit Public Radio, Ware says these latest acts of violence have done nothing to quell the potential for more.

Ware says it’s concerning that some of the safeguards to monitor extremism are gone.

Cuts to counterterrorism

“Our counterterrorism infrastructure has been largely eroded, if not destroyed, by the Trump administration, and in particular, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) cuts in places like the FBI and DHS,” Ware said.

Under the Trump administration, efforts of federal law enforcement have been reassigned to immigration enforcement. Ware says undocumented immigrants are not a threat of political violence or terrorism.

“Undocumented immigrants can be a source of a variety of challenges, including crime, including drugs, but it typically has not had a relationship with with terrorism,” Ware said. “In fact, in a study I conducted last year, I found that the number of terrorist fatalities caused by undocumented immigrants in US history is actually zero.”

Ware believes law enforcement’s focus on immigration enforcement is one factor in a rise in terrorism. Another is a lack of deterrence.

“When President Trump pardoned 1,500 people who committed an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he began to erode that deterrence,” Ware said. “People in America no longer feel like acts of violence perpetrators on behalf of political ideologies are going to be punished.”

The federal government also uses community outreach programs to stop radicalization.

“Prevention is basically federal grants that go to local organizations—grassroots organizations—that work to build resilience against radicalization in their own communities,” Ware said. “That grant making ability has been built up over several administrations, including the first Trump administration… and that work has now largely been been canceled through through the DOGE cuts.”

Response to latest political violence

The Trump Administration has used the killing of Charlie Kirk to blame left-wing groups, even though there’s been no evidence the alleged shooter was aligned with any.

President Trump wants to designate Antifa —the loose collective of left-wing individuals that oppose fascism—as a terrorist organization. Antifa has no leadership structure.

Ware says that’s not the only reason there’s little chance of Trump succeeding.

“It’s important to note that we actually don’t even have domestic terrorism laws, let alone domestic terrorism lists, in this country,” Ware said.

“So in theory, these are really empty threats. There is no way to designate a domestic group as a terrorist organization.

The field for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate being vacated by Gary Peters is already crowded.

Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow jumped in right away.

Abdul El-Sayed’s entry into the fray is not a surprise. An epidemiologist by trade, he served as health director for the City of Detroit – then ran for governor in 2018. He finished second in the primary to Gretchen Whitmer. El-Sayed picked up the most votes in Detroit.

El-Sayed returned to the world of public health and directed Wayne County’s health department. He resigned from that position in April to run for U.S. Senate.

In a conversation with Detroit Public Radio’s Russ McNamara, El-Sayed laid out his platform.

Challenging the system

“I want money out of politics, money back in your pocket, and Medicare for All,” El-Sayed said.

In short, there’s a brewing class war and politicians have made it too easy for people to become billionaires at the expense of the working class.

“The fundamental corruption of our politics has been the system that allows corporations and would be oligarchs and billionaires to buy politicians, who then rig the system so that corporations can charge you more for the things that you have to buy from them, and pay you less for the work that you have to do for them,” El-Sayed said.

El-Sayed says that means—much like his run for governor in 2018—that he isn’t taking money from corporations.

And despite his progressive credentials, El-Sayed claims he sees political challenges in a different framework.

“I don’t believe in left and right,” El-Sayed says. “I instead believe, ‘are you part of the system locking people out, or are you working for the people who want to unlock the system?’ For them, I’m focused on unlocking the system.”

“If you’re willing to have an honest conversation, if you’re willing to be truthful and direct and specific about what you want to do, people are willing to listen.”

‘I’ve been Abdul my whole life‘

El-Sayed says he understands that there are some people who won’t vote for him because he is Muslim.

“You get pretty good at explaining yourself, and I’ve learned that when people get past the name, they’re a lot more interested in what you have to say,” El-Sayed said.

He says he’s not about the change who he is, or his message.

“I’m the guy named Abdul who stood up and took on corporate polluters. I’m the guy named Abdul that helped to rewrite the state’s lead laws after Flint, when we had every school, daycare and head start in Detroit tested for lead in the water. I’m the guy named Abdul who put glasses on tens of thousands of kids faces,” El-Sayed said.

The Democratic Party and Gaza

One of the recurring threads to last year’s presidential election was the Biden Administration’s indifference to Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza. Vice President Kamala Harris largely refused to engage with Palestinians, and pro-Palestinian activists. At the Democratic National Convention, organizers refused to let a Palestinian speak.

On Tuesday, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

“I want our tax dollars to stop killing children,” El-Sayed said. “You don’t have to be a human rights expert to see the deaths of 18,500 kids, the attempt to render their homes unlivable, to destroy their parents lives and livelihoods and to ship them off into another place because they happen to speak the same language, and call that what it’s called.”

Polling has shown that people who identify as Democrats are largely against sending more bombs to Israel—something that is not reflected in party leadership.

“The fact that our party was on the wrong side of that obvious truth for a very long time is itself an indictment,” El-Sayed said.

El-Sayed says he has had many discussions about difficult subjects at campaign stops across the state.

“If you’re willing to have an honest conversation, if you’re willing to be truthful and direct and specific about what you want to do, people are willing to listen.”

In the last episode of CuriosiD, WDET’s Russ McNamara took a look at the history and emergence of the Detroit-specific phrase – “What Up Doe”

That led him to Detroit music producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Filthy Rockwell. He owns the trademark for ‘WHATUPDOE!’.

Rockwell explained why he felt compelled to start his own brand, but not before sharing his own theory about how ‘What Up Doe?’ got popularized.

Rockwell’s theory

Rockwell says he reached out to an unofficial uncle for background—George Clinton. Clinton was no stranger to Detroit, working first as a songwriter at Motown Records and then recording legendary albums here at United Sound Systems.

“I was talking to [Clinton], and I asked him one day…when was the first time he heard ‘What up doe?’ And he said the first time he heard what up though was in the early 70s, and he said he heard it from Amp Fiddler,” Rockwell said.

Fiddler was a legendary Detroit keyboardist who worked with J Dilla, Prince, and Moodyman.

Starting in the mid-1980s, Fiddler toured with Clinton for about a decade.

Fiddler grew up on Detroit’s east side and graduated from Osborne High School. He was an in-demand and working musician up until his untimely death in 2023.

The “What up doe” brand

About that trademark…

“I own the letters W-H-A-T-U-P-D-O-E,” Rockwell said. “If you spell ‘What Up Doe’ like that in any way, put that on anything I own it.”

He says the whole process started out more than a decade ago.

“I didn’t just trademark ‘What Up Doe,’ I turned it into a brand,” Rockwell said. “When I started selling t-shirts and hats and nobody wanted to sell a ‘What Up Doe’ t-shirt or a hat when I started, nobody.”

Rockwell releases some of the gear through his Filthy Americans brand.

He started out selling the clothing at The Jungle Room in Birmingham and Burn Rubber in Royal Oak and Detroit.

Rockwell had a skate shop and event space near West Grand Boulevard and The Lodge, before parking issues and high rent made it difficult to stay open.

Still the popularity of ‘What Up Doe’ endured with a partnership with the Detroit Pistons.

“We just put out the ‘What Up Doe’ hat at the end of last season before the playoffs, and it just went, went really, really crazy,” Rockwell said. “We gonna do more, drop new designs and show more Detroit pride.”

Though he says the meaning behind all of this is much more than merchandising.

“It wasn’t about just throwing something on a t shirt or a hat. It’s not about that. ‘What Up Doe’ means so much more,” Rockwell said. “It’s about ‘What Up Doe’ with love from Detroit.”

There is set to be considerable turnover on Detroit City Council after November’s election. City Council President Mary Sheffield is running for mayor leaving a vacancy in District 5. Fred Durhal III also ran for mayor, but failed to advance in the primary, so District 7 is now open.

Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett, by virtue of name recognition and corporate backing, seemed to be the front runner heading into the District 7 primary.

However, it was Democratic Socialist Denzel McCampbell that earned the most votes.

McCampbell has some deep liberal credentials, including time as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s communications director and as the head of the Progress Michigan. McCampbell was also a Detroit Charter Revision Commissioner and lost a bid to replace Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey in 2021.

His opponent, Whitsett, hasn’t shied away from attacking McCampbell for his progressive roots. The Detroit Democrat has taken criticism from members of her own party for praising Donald Trump during the Covid-19 pandemic and caucusing with Republicans during last year’s lame duck session.

McCampbell isn’t fazed by Whitsett’s attacks.

“I’ve been a community organizer my entire adult life and been working around voting rights, election protection, equitable development, making sure that we have what we need in our neighborhoods around environmental justice issues – the right to breathe clear air,” McCampbell said.

So for me, it is actually making sure that our people have the power, but also that we have a city government that is responsive to their needs.

McCampbell says he’s knocked on 15,000 doors in his district.

“What folks are actually upset with…is the way that our government has given away so much money to, the billionaire class and corporations, while their needs go to the wayside,” McCampbell said. “So for me, it is actually making sure that our people have the power, but also that we have a city government that is responsive to their needs.”

Water affordability legislation was left behind in the state legislature when 2024’s lame duck session ended early. McCampbell says it needs to be brought back.

“I have been advocating for solutions that address affordable housing. I’ve been advocating for solutions to address water affordability, because water is a human right,” McCampbell said. “I’ve been pushing to make sure that corporations and their interests are out of our government, that would get money out of politics.”

McCampbell says Whitsett isn’t “showing up” for people in her House district by working with Republicans to kill Democratic priorities. Whitsett was the lone Democrat who voted for the GOP-led House budget.

If elected, McCampbell wouldn’t be the only Democratic Socialist on council. Gabriela Santiago-Romero is running for re-election in District 6.

As for Detroit’s race for mayor between Sheffield and Rev. Solomon Kinloch, McCampbell is still making up his mind.

“I’m focused on the District 7 race, but, I think what I’ll be looking for is a mayor that works closely and collaboratively with Detroit City Council.”

In this episode of CuriosiD, we answer the question:

“What is the origin of ‘What up doe’?”

The short answer

‘What up doe?’ was a condensed greeting between drug dealers — dope boys — that operated in Detroit in the late-1970s and 80s. Doe = dough = cash.

The dark origins of ‘What up doe’

Professor and Poet Aurora Harris grew up in Detroit, bounced around the city including a couple semesters at Detroit Pershing High School, home of the Doughboys.

“We had the drug culture with the heroin, with Pony down gang, Young Boys Incorporated, the Errol Flynns,” Harris said. “And then in the 80s, we had the Chambers Brothers, you know, doing the heavy cocaine stuff.”

Detroit music producer Waajeed says that’s how he remembers it growing up in the 80s on the city’s east side.

“Unless you had a certain status, you couldn’t walk in the street. You had to walk on the sidewalk. Only the dope boys could walk in the street,” Waajeed said.

Each crew had their own identity.

“I remember those guys…they wore a specific type of hat. They wore, like Max Julian jackets, leather, really, really nice jackets with fur and around the collar and Stan Smith Adidas,” Waajeed said.

“Those were the guys that would say, ‘What up doe?’ in my neighborhood.”

In the 80’s “What up Doe” was a form of sonar – a call and response way of navigating the neighborhood.

“So you could check someone with ‘What up, doe’,” Waajeed said. “You could say ‘What up doe’ as a greeting, as a way of saying, ‘hello,’ ‘Aloha,’ whatever, but it was also a way of…making sure that a person is aware that you’re aware of them.”

For Harris, ‘What up doe’ meant talking to the dope boys — not to score drugs, but to find her niece who had a substance use disorder.

Harris wrote a poem to discuss her experience — a pain that was shared by many Detroiters over the past five decades.

“Good morning, my brother, yo, I’m not a cop, not Po Po. How you doing today? Can you talk for a minute? I’ll make it real quick, because you clock in sunlight, cars and corners. I’m looking for my kid, my sister, brother, auntie, uncle, Mama, daddy, nephew, my niece.”

A salutation. A greeting. A cry for help.

“None of y’all should be out here. I gotta find my baby,  / Yo if I see her, what you got for me? / You got that cross on the chain, wearing Jesus on your chest? I’ll, I’ll pray for you daily. That’s all I got left.”

But meanings can change over time.

“What up doe was born out of love and pain from the 70s to the 90s, to be born again as Detroit’s unique and coded greeting for strangers, families and friends.”

From the underground to Detroit catchphrase

For Detroit Comedian Tiffany Barber — T-Barb on stage — that greeting has always been a part of her life. 

“I was in the womb saying ‘What up doe,’ Barber said. “I was in my mama third trimester, and I was in there, and I said, ‘What up doe’. And she got gas when I said it”

Rap-group Afrocentric Wicked Old-school Lyricists AKA A.W.O.L. is said to have been the first Detroit act to put ‘What up doe’ in a single, but the recording has been tough to track down.

Others have been easier to find.

• The Big Dog’s ‘What Up Dow’

• Dice’s “Whut Up Doe”

• Danny Brown’s “What up Doe”

• And most famously Tone Tone’s “Whaddup Doe”

Then Eminem’s cinematic classic 8 Mile gave ‘What up doe’ a worldwide platform.

Waajeed says that’s alright.

“In the same way that Detroiters are wearing the Tigers’ hat and know absolutely nothing about baseball, it’s the same way that some people are saying ‘What up doe’ and just have no real cultural reference and understanding towards what it is and who it’s for,” Waajeed said.

“And either way is okay.”

Barber says she’s not about to gatekeep — in most circumstances.

“We’re cool with everybody. One thing about Detroit is we’re some of the coolest people that you’ll ever meet. We’re always the friendly ones. We’re always the inviting ones,” Barber said.

“So we invite you to say ‘What up doe’, but you can’t capitalize off of ‘What up doe’ if you not from Detroit.”

“Leave our ‘What up doe’ alone when it comes to the paper, that’s our money, but we welcome you to embody the culture,” Barber said.

There have been attempts to turn ‘What up doe’ – and its many visual iterations – into paper. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied at least two attempts to trademark the phrase.

Detroit music producer and philanthropist Filthy Rockwell has a Whatupdoe clothing and goods line.

Poet Aurora Harris says ‘What up doe’ belongs to everyone now.

“I feel like at this point the term is like Motown Records,” Harris said. “It was born in in Detroit, and it’s gone global. There’s nothing we could do about it. Be happy about it.”

Still, is all this just a little problematic given the phrase’s roots in drug culture?

“Detroiters are adaptable. We’re resilient, and we could take anything that’s a tragedy or anything that’s a trauma and turn it into something good.”

About the listener

Peter Bloye was born in Detroit and raised in Dearborn Heights.

For him, the origins of the question came when he was working for the City of Detroit a few years ago.

“I heard a lot of different things that people would say I was unfamiliar with. And  I would ask my crewmates, like, ‘hey, what does this mean exactly?’ And you know, we had a good relationship, and they would explain it. But this phrase, I got different answers. So I really like, ‘Okay, well, none of those really work for me.’ So I just was still curious.”

Bloye no longer works for the city. He’s a full-time caretaker for his mother in Allen Park.

Did he ever feel comfortable using the phrase?

“No, I did not, ”Bloye said. “It seemed like an exclusively Detroit thing,”

We want to hear from you! 

Have a question about southeast Michigan’s history or culture? Send it our way at wdet.org/curiosid, or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

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In 2021 and 2023, parts of Southeast Michigan were inundated with rain. This led to storm and sewer water backing up into thousands of homes in Detroit, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights.

Those cities did provide some financial relief, but federal money was largely hard to come by.

Now, the Fix Our Flooded Basements Act seeks to provide federal disaster relief for basements. Currently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doesn’t cover damage to basements or mold and mildew mitigation.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced the bill along with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Congresswoman Shontel Brown (D-OH).

“Water damage can ruin electrical systems, destroy heating and cooling systems, damage foundations and create long term health effects,” Tlaib said. “Especially the exposure of mold. It’s the biggest concern for many of us.”

The bill would also allow people to purchase flood insurance that would cover basement backups.

“The bill will also expand eligibility for FEMA group flood insurance policy,” Tlaib said. “It’s super important to ensure that FEMA would cover mold, mildew and moisture damage in basements.”

Donna Givens Davidson is the president and CEO of the Eastside Community Network.

Aging infrastructure on Detroit’s East side has led to basement flooding even from smaller storms, especially in the areas around the canals in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood. Givens Davidson says passing this bill would be a measure of justice to Detroiters.

“This bill brings us closer to addressing the cumulative impacts of racist public policy over the years in places like the east side of Detroit,” Givens Davidson said. “It’s where senior citizens, where low-income people, are already living in homes they cannot afford to repair.”

Candace Aaron lives in the Franklin Park neighborhood. She remembers the nightmare of helping her father after the flooding.

“There was a lot of water damage, mold damage to the windows, damage to some of the foundation on the house, the roof,” Aaron said. “So I went and applied for FEMA to see what services my father would be able to receive.”

It turns out the nightmare of the flooding turned into one of bureaucracy.

Aaron’s father was denied mitigation services, but eventually received limited help.

“It wasn’t enough to cover the damage,” Aaron said. “It was very extensive in the basement and on the outside of the home. So I think that this bill would do better.”

As for the chances of the bill’s passage in a sharply divided Congress, Rep. Tlaib doesn’t see an issue.

“I don’t see any controversy or any opposition to this,” Tlaib said. “I mean, obviously some of my colleagues who want to eliminate FEMA will not probably support this, because it expands more FEMA coverage, but many of the people that I know I’ve spoken to on both sides of the aisle shake their head immediately and say, ‘Oh, this is a good bill’.”

Detroiter Duane Williams is suing the city of Detroit and the police and fire departments for $100 million in damages over his wrongful conviction in 2013.

Williams was sentenced to life in prison in connection with a fire that killed two people.

He spent over 11 years behind bars before a judge ordered that Williams be released last year due to the conviction being tainted by false and manipulated testimony. Williams’ attorney, Todd Flood, says investigators lied about a lighter found at the source of the fire that killed two people.

“It was an accidental fire. The fire started on a couch in that room where one of the decedents was severely intoxicated. He was a known smoker, and there was smoking materials found in that room, on that couch,” he said.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

“I’m a prosecutor at heart, I’m a law enforcement guy at heart; I’m a person that stands for integrity,” Flood said. “This shocks the conscience when you look at this lawsuit and you see the people that ultimately conspired to put Dwayne behind bars.”

Williams says he still has mental scars from his near decade spent in prison, describing the difficulties just walking down the street can bring.

“I just kept telling myself, don’t look back, because in prison, you don’t want anybody walking behind you, and you don’t know who it is,” he said. “But I wasn’t in prison. I was free, and I tried so hard not to look back, but I had to stop and look back. I couldn’t help it.”

He said his time spent in prison has also forever changed his relationship with his wife and family.

“People think that the court systems work. People think that the systems that are in place, the appeals process and all these other things, work,” Williams said. “But they don’t work when you’re the person in the system, and that’s sad, and I pray that we’ll find a way to fix that.”

City officials have not responded to the lawsuit and said they will not comment on pending litigation.

Hundreds of nurses, lab techs and other workers are on strike at McLaren Macomb Hospital in Mount Clemens after contract negotiations have hit a roadblock.

A key sticking point is safe staffing levels, with nurses saying they’re getting burned out and there aren’t enough of them to maintain an adequate level of patient care.

Dina Carlisle, a registered nurse and president of OPEIU Local 40, says many of the support staff do not make a living wage.

“Many of them make poverty wages. They can apply for Medicaid and SNAP benefits,” she said. “No one should be working three jobs to make ends meet, and that’s what their fight is about.”

In a statement, a McLaren spokesperson says that staffing levels meet federal guidelines and the hospital group is planning to file charges of unfair labor practices against the union.

“The union’s narrative that we are unsafe and have horrible working conditions is an outright misrepresentation of the reality of the quality care provided at the hospital,” part of the statement read.  

Both sides have accused the other of bargaining in bad faith.

Carlisle said the union has offered to give up retention bonuses in return for the hospital hiring more workers.

“Pure and simple, we want safe staffing for our service group,” she said. “They’re the folks who are phlebotomists. They draw your blood, the sitters who sit with you when you’re not safe to be alone, the people who register you in the ER, we want them to have a living wage.”

McLaren brought in temporary workers to cover during the three-day strike — and because of that — the nurses will be locked out on Thursday and Friday, and back to work Saturday morning.

Detroit officials announced the launch of a new teen violence prevention plan in response to recent shooting incidents involving children in the city.

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At a news conference on Monday, Mayor Mike Duggan said the city will enforce a 10 p.m. curfew as part of the plan, adding that over the past month, 12 of the 20 shootings involving minors happened late at night or in the early hours of the morning.

“Whatever trouble teenagers may get into in the afternoon and the evening as you start to get to 11, 12, 1 in the morning — whether they’re drinking, whether they’re using substances, whether they’re just beefing — the behavior gets worse and worse,” he said.

Duggan says he will ask the Detroit City Council to raise the fines for parents whose kids are caught outside after curfew without adult supervision. 

Duggan is also authorizing more overtime for the Detroit Police Department, so officers will stay out later to enforce the curfew against groups of teenagers. 

Watch Duggan and Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison’s announcement about the effort here.

Reporting by Russ McNamara, WDET News

Other headlines for Monday, July 7, 2025:

• The city of Dearborn has unveiled another ability inclusive playscape. This third installment can be found at Lapeer Park, joining Ford Woods and Crowley parks in providing activities for children with special mobility needs. Dearborn Parks & Recreation worked with disability groups and families to design the park.
• Michigan residents now have the option to take the written portion of the driver’s education course online. The “KnowTo Drive” test can be taken at Michigan Secretary of State branches and offices, and is available in different languages. Eligible Michigan residents over 18 must verify proof of identity and pay a $6.50 convenience fee. They will also have to use a webcam to prove their identity.
• Detroit Documenters is a program that trains and pays people to take notes at public meetings in Detroit. Documenters is hosting a network-wide Virtual Note-taking Practice Session from 6-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 9. Participants must complete an orientation training before participating in the note-taking training. The Documenters are also hosting a photo documenting workshop in Tech Town on July 15.  

Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.