Sarah Cwiek

An undocumented Albanian man who’s been living in sanctuary in a Detroit church to avoid deportation has an important hearing this week.

Ded Rranxburgaj came to the U.S. with his family illegally in 2001, in hopes of claiming political asylum. Advocates say they’ve tried every legal way they could to stay in the U.S, but the Trump administration moved to deport Rranxburgaj in 2018.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District wants parent input about how their students will be learning in the fall.

DPSCD is offering both fully virtual and face-to-face instruction. District officials say they want a parent feedback survey completed by August 4, though the “drop-dead deadline” for responses is August 21.

Detroit U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider and other federal law enforcement officials say federal agents are coming to Detroit to help fight violent crime—not to harass or arrest protesters.

Schneider provided more details about the Trump Administration’s “Operation Legend” on Wednesday. It will bring more than 40 federal agents from various agencies to Detroit to help deal with a recent surge in crime. Those agencies include the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Federal law enforcement agents and other resources are headed to Detroit fight a surge in violent crime, U.S. government officials announced this week.

The plan, dubbed Operation Legend, is a Trump administration anti-crime initiative targeting several major cities.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel should lead an independent investigation into the death of Hakim Littleton, a coalition of activists and members of Littleton’s family said Thursday.

Detroit police shot Littleton to death earlier this month. Police bodycam and dashcam footage appears to show Littleton firing at officers at close range before they shot him.

A Detroit police officer has been arraigned on charges for shooting rubber bullets at photojournalists during an anti-police brutality protest in Detroit.

Corporal Daniel Debono is charged with three counts of felonious assault. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said he fired rubber bullets at three photojournalists during a May 31 protest for “no explicable reasons.”

Detroiters will get a chance to vote in November on whether the city should borrow $250 million to tackle blight, after the Detroit City Council approved Mayor Mike Duggan’s proposal on Tuesday.

The Council vote was a narrow 5-4 victory for Duggan’s “Proposal N,” which would issue city-backed bonds for blight remediation. The plan calls for using $90 million to remediate and secure 8,000 vacant homes for later rehab, and $160 million for 8,000 demolitions. Duggan says the bond would not raise existing tax rates, which are otherwise set to drop below current levels as the city retires some debt.

Public pressure is mounting to free a 15-year-old Black girl sent to Oakland County juvenile detention for not doing her homework.

The girl is known only by her middle name, Grace. She was on probation for some minor offenses, such as fighting with her mother and taking another child's iPad.

The Michigan Supreme Court has dealt a blow to county treasurers with a new ruling, finding that counties can’t keep any profits they get from selling tax-foreclosed homes at auction.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit, Rafaeli v. Oakland County, that challenged one part of Michigan’s tax foreclosure law. The current law, which dates back to 1999, allows county treasurers—who collect delinquent property taxes on behalf of local communities—to pocket the whole sale price of auctioned properties, regardless of the amount of delinquent tax debt.

Michigan’s largest school district has approved a re-opening plan that includes in-person learning.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District board voted for the plan Tuesday night. It calls for schools to make a number of adaptations to manage the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is taking another shot at convincing voters—and the Detroit City Council—to borrow $250 million for a blight elimination program.

The Council rejected Duggan’s initial plan to issue bonds for a sweeping demolition program last year. But Duggan said on Tuesday that this new plan is fundamentally different, and addresses council and community concerns.

Update: Friday, July 10, 11:20 p.m.

Detroit Police Chief James Craig says body and dash cam footage show that Hakim Littleton fired at officers before they killed him on Friday. But that came after protests erupted in the wake of Littleton’s death.

The ACLU and other civil rights groups are suing the city of Detroit and others over Detroit’s water shutoffs.

Detroit has shut off water service to around 100,000 homes since 2014 for non-payment. Close to 25,000 homes were disconnected in 2019.

The state will open up applications for the Michigan Agricultural Safety Grant Program next week. They’re meant to promote worker safety through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The program will provide $15 million in total: $10 million to food processors, and another $5 million to farms. The money can be used for things like personal protective equipment, employee testing for COVID-19, safety upgrades for farm-provided housing, or facility improvements, like installing plexi-glass barriers.

Robert Williams of Farmington Hills was arrested and held for more than a day in January, on larceny charges that he stole Shinola watches from a downtown Detroit store.

But Williams says he was innocent, and the only evidence police ever had against him was a facial recognition technology “match” of his old driver’s license photo against grainy surveillance footage of the real thief.

Protesters who have taken to Detroit’s streets in the weeks since George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police say Detroit police have brutalized them. Some recounted their stories at a self-styled tribunal on Saturday night.

Person after person gave testimony alleging that Detroit police taunted, pepper sprayed, and assaulted them at marches earlier this month – mostly for violating Detroit’s then-8 p.m. curfew.

Enbridge had temporarily shut down Line 5 after discovering significant damage to an anchor support on one of the dual pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac. The company notified the state about the damage on Thursday, according to a statement from the governor's office. The source of the damage is currently unclear.

Detroit ended its week-long celebration of Juneteenth with a rally at the city’s Spirit Plaza on Friday.

Juneteenth—June 19—commemorates the day in 1865 that enslaved people in Texas learned they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

The ACLU of Michigan is launching a campaign to hold prosecutors responsible for inequities in the criminal justice system.

The group says prosecutors are the single most powerful elected individuals who decide who gets incarcerated, and for how long.

Activists took to the streets of Eight Mile Road again Wednesday evening to draw attention to the Detroit area’s racial divisions. Eight Mile has long served as a dividing line between predominantly-Black Detroit, and its predominantly-white suburbs.

Organizers say that Black people often fear crossing Eight Mile because it can lead to negative encounters with police. And they say suburban residents often fear crossing Eight Mile because they associate Detroit with violence.

Michigan's elections bureau says a group failed to collect enough petitions to put veto-proof legislation before the Republican-led Legislature that would prohibit a second-trimester abortion procedure known medically as "dilation and evacuation."

Monday's report was a blow to the Michigan Values Life committee. It submitted 380,000 signatures in December, 40,000 more than needed.

Detroit is celebrating Juneteenth with a week-long series of events starting on Monday.

Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19. It commemorates the day in 1865 that slaves in Texas learned they would be freed.

Update: 8:15 a.m. Friday, June 12: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is extending a ban on evictions through the rest of June for tenants and mobile home owners. The eviction ban was set to expire when Whitmer signed a new executive order expanding it until June 30.

Original post: Wednesday, June 10: A group of protesters caravanned through the streets of one Detroit neighborhood on Tuesday, demanding more relief for renters during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The protesters called on Governor Gretchen Whitmer to extend the moratorium on evictions that's set to expire on Thursday. Whitmer has already extended it twice.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has delivered a blow to an effort to release medically-vulnerable inmates from the Oakland County Jail.

Inmates and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in April. They said Oakland County wasn’t doing enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the jail, and asked the court to order that inmates with medical conditions be released.

Oakland County is bringing some new employees on board for when schools re-open this fall—nurses.

The Oakland Together School Nurse Initiative calls for hiring 68 nurses. Each nurse would be assigned a school district to work with through December.