Leelanau County Sheriff Mike Borkovich said his office is ready to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the new administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Homeland Security Investigations announced Jan. 27 that they are “working to apprehend immigration violators in Michigan and Ohio.”
Borkovich admits that he doesn’t know how these efforts will affect Leelanau County and its significant immigrant and migrant population, including farm workers. He says that ICE has not announced any planned operations in the county to his office.
But then again, Borkovich says, they typically don’t contact local police before raids unless they need backup.
“If they come to me and they say, ‘We’re trying to make an arrest at this location ... and we need your help,’ we’ll back them up,” Borkovich said. “But our sheriff’s office is not going to go door to door based on what you look like, or what your last name is, and look for people. “
Borkovich said county police would also help federal agents if they chose to conduct raids at local schools. President Trump recently signed an executive order allowing immigration enforcement officials to make arrests at previously exempt areas like schools, churches, and hospitals.
Although he thinks immigration raids at Leelanau County schools are unlikely, Borkovich also clearly said that he wouldn’t try to stop them.
Unless ICE directly calls on them for support, however, the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office will continue their usual law enforcement activities. Borkovich said his deputies’ top priority is not enforcing immigration laws.
However, Borkovich mentioned that his officers took “a few people into cus- tody for knife and gun incidents” in 2024. He says the suspects did not have proper IDs and were allegedly in the U.S. illegally. In these cases, Borkovich said, the sheriff’s office contacted the ICE office in Sault Ste. Marie and the people were deported.
When asked how many incidents like this occurred last year, Borkovich replied, “Not very many. I don’t know – probably less than five.”
Borkovich stated his belief that ICE does not target people based on their race or ethnicity. So, if the sheriff’s office is asked to assist in their arrests, Borkovich is confident the raids will only target “illegal aliens” committing crimes in the U.S. and not any citizens or migrants with valid work permits.
“If we said tomorrow, ‘Anybody can come into this country,’ we’re going to get disease, we’re going to get criminals ... We’re going to have too many people. They’re going to flood our city streets. These people who created sanctuary cities like Chicago and L.A. — see how long that works for them,” Borkovich said. *** Still, some Leelanau County farmers are concerned the wave of deportations will scare away all their migrant workers, including the ones who are in the country legally through the H-2A temporary agriculture worker program.
Which is a grim prospect for the already struggling farmers in the county, because Jim Bardenhagen of Bardenhagen Farms in Suttons Bay said that they very much rely on foreign labor. He said most U.S. citizens don’t want to do farm work themselves.
“We don’t have people who want to come and work in agriculture. If they take this work force away from us, we’re sunk. The only reprieve we have is through the H-2A system,” Bardenhagen said. “If we don’t have the help, we can’t harvest.” “We’ve heard that ICE is only going to go after criminals, but a lot of reports say that they’re taking innocent people and even citizens,” Bardenhagen continued.
Bardenhagen said he was surprised that Sheriff Borkovich told the Leelanau Ticker that he would provide “any and all” assistance to ICE earlier this week. When Bardenhagen and some other farmers met with the sheriff about two weeks earlier, Bardenhagen said he thought Borkovich suggested that county police would not help federal agents “rattle up” their workforce.
“They shouldn’t lose the part of the labor force that’s here legally,” Borkovich responded. “What they’ll lose are the criminals, people who aren’t here legally, and the people who have fake work permits. ... I feel bad that they can’t get consistent labor from year to year.”
Commenting generally on the challenges of cherry farming, Gary Fredrickson of Fredrickson Farms in Northport agreed with Bardenhagen on the importance of migrant workers. He said the number of seasonal workers has been “dwindling for years because of the fear of getting deported.”
Both Bardenhagen and Fredrickson said that paying workers through the H-2A program can be costly — the federal government set a minimum $18.15 hourly wage rate for H-2A workers in December, and their employers must provide housing and meals — but often necessary.
The number of H-2A jobs certifi ed in Leelanau County varies from year to year. According to a Michigan State University Extension presentation from the 2025 Annual Cherry Institute, 500-1,000 H-2A jobs were certified in Leelanau County in 2023. In both 2023 and 2024, Michigan had over 15,000 H-2A positions, making it the state with the sixth most temporary agriculture workers. *** Under the Trump administration, ICE agents are now empowered to make arrests in schools. Leelanau County public school superintendents recently met with Sheriff Borkovich to discuss the schools’ rights and responsibilities in the event of an ICE raid.
Leland Public School Superintendent Stephanie Long said that local law enforcement has a positive relationship with Leelanau County schools, and that they were able to provide them guidance that will help teachers and staff “protect (their) school communities.”
Long said that the sheriff’s office expressed to them that they were not in favor of ICE visits at their school districts.
“There are a significant number of people in our county who are justifiably nervous about these executive orders. Whether somebody is illegal or not, it’s affecting a specific population. These are our neighbors — people who we go to school and shop with,” Long said.
Northport Public School Superintendent Neil Wetherbee said school officials reminded the sheriff that schools cannot disclose most student information to anyone, including police and immigration enforcement officers, without a subpoena or parental permission, per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
According to FERPA, schools should not ask about or record the immigration status of students and their family members.
“This does not speak to any of our political beliefs or school board positions — we simply stated our legal requirements,” Wetherbee said. “I’m happy we met, and we’ll keep doing what we do best – educating the children in our communities.”
Administrators from Leland and Suttons Bay Public Schools and Glen Lake Community Schools also told the newspaper that they remain committed to providing a safe learning environment for county youth.
“We want to make sure we continue delivering high quality instruction to our staff and students, meet their needs to the extent that falls in our charge, make them feel safe and secure, and take care of our people,” said Casey Petz, Suttons Bay Public Schools superintendent.
In 2019, before Long was the school superintendent, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested a Hispanic man from Lake Leelanau after dropping off his child at Leland Public School. An eyewitness claimed federal agents staked out the school before making the arrest, but CBP denied this.
Borkovich said he has not seen hard evidence of ICE/CBP operating in local schools, which were still protected as “sensitive areas” at that time. Since this happened before she was hired as superintendent in 2020, Long declined to comment.
Rev. Wayne Dziekan, a Spanish-speaking priest and director of the Secretariat for Justice and Peace for the Catholic Diocese of Gaylord, declined to comment to the Enterprise about the effect of the immigration crackdown on his Hispanic congregation members.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), everyone has Constitutional rights regardless of their immigration status. It advises that lawful permanent residents always carry their papers, and to remain silent or ask for a lawyer if law enforcement stops people without them.
The ACLU also says immigrants are not required to answer questions from law enforcement or consent to being searched. For more information, visit aclu.org/know-yourrights/ immigrant-rights.
“We don’t have people who want to come and work in agriculture. If they take this work force away from us, we’re sunk,”
— Farmer Jim Bardenhagen
