After a rash of immigration detainments on Sept. 23 and 24, a number of family members and community organizations have complained that the sudden surge of arrests has served to intimidate and preoccupy immigrant communities just before the election, making people less likely to vote.

The arrests were made during scheduled appointments with officials and included immigrants who had been granted stays of deportation.

Complaints were also raised about multiple strip searches the detainees were subjected to. Detainees were stripped down as a group, intensely embarrassing and offending Arab American detainees, to whom, for cultural reasons, being naked in front of others is particularly humiliating.

“It feels bad. Really bad,” said Ayda Merhi, whose husband Medien Merhi was detained when he reported for a regular appointment with immigration officials.

He was sent to Dickerson Jail in Hamtramck and then transferred to St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron.

Ayda Merhi has been in the U.S. for 23 years, Medien Merhi for 15.

“It appeared to be a sweep,” said Detroit immigration attorney Tamara French.

She said that on Sept. 23, she walked into the office where immigrants with pending deportation cases go to regularly report and found the room empty.

“It was eerie,” she said.

She said she usually advises her clients facing deportation that there is always a one percent chance of being arrested during the regular reports to immigration authorities.

“I had to explain to him that this was that one percent,” she said about one of her clients.

She said sudden sweeps may have to do with space in county jails being available and paid for at certain times, or that perhaps someone at Immigration and Customs Enforcement simply throws a dart at a calendar to decide when to execute a surge of arrests.

“You could come up with all kinds of theories,” she said.

“It appears unfair because its unusual,” she said.

But if there was more funding to finance arrests, “there would probably be more people detained,” she said.

“It’s not illegal… All the laws are there, they just don’t have all the money.”

Vincent Clausen, of ICE, said he forwarded inquiries for explanation of such sweeps to the agency’s public affairs representatives.

No response was given as of press time Thursday.

Ayda Merhi said her husband was strip searched with a group of about 50 men twice in the first week of his detainment.

Dickerson Jail is run by Wayne County.

Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans’ Chief of Staff Darryl Fordham said the department is contracted by ICE to house detainees.

He said the detainees are kept separate from the jail’s general population, but that everyone entering the jail is subject to a strip search and that random sanitation inspections, in which officers thoroughly search detainees and their belongings for contraband, are very common.

“Anyone who comes into Wayne County jails are strip searched,” he said. “We go through everything.”

The searches are performed in groups for efficiency of time, but Fordham said that if individuals request to be searched separately, they are granted a more private search.

“If someone says they prefer not to be in the group… if at any time they say they’re not comfortable… they can make the request and they’ll be separate,” he said.

He said the detainees are not directly notified of that right, but that rules and regulations of the jail are posted on signs where the detainees are housed.

Other complaints were made about St. Clair County Jail, where family members of detainees said there is thick glass between inmates and visitors, with no holes or telephones for them to communicate through.

“He can’t hear me from the window and I can’t hear him,” said Ayda Merhi about an attempt to visit her husband. I went for nothing.”

Some also said they were prevented from giving detainees copies of the Qur’an.

St. Clair County Administrator Shaun Groden said in an email message that the glass divide in the visiting area of the jail has design features that allow for sound to pass through.

“No one has complained previously that they cannot hear,” he said. “Phones for one-on-one communication are not required. If an inmate needs to speak long distance to relatives or an attorney, telephones are provided on a 24-hour basis. Inmates are not prevented from communicating with relatives or attorneys in any fashion.

He also said “no religious books are denied to any demonination.”

Regional Director of the American-Arab Anti-Disrimination Committee Imad Hamad said he is confused, if all of the reported detention practices are common procedure, as to why the complaints have only recently come up in significant numbers.

“Why have we never heard about this until now? Why now?” he said.