As ICE raids are carried out in eastern Kentucky and protests are held in communities across the Commonwealth, a group in Morehead hopes to educate the community on issues facing migrants. Rowan County Concerned Citizens for Migrants is hosting a series of documentary screenings and community discussions in the coming months.
Concerned Citizens for Migrants, or CCM, was founded during COVID, and they have started out 2026 strong, hosting monthly events in the basement of the First Baptist Church on Main Street in Morehead.
They are currently focusing their meetings around the documentary series Living Undocumented, produced in 2018 during President Trump’s first term. It is still relevant today as Trump built his 2024 campaign on targeting undocumented migrants after a recent spike in immigration that he attributed to the Biden administration
“Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world,” Donald Trump said.
Trump said the crackdown is about keeping Americans safe.
Publicly available ICE data, however, shows that of the thousands of migrants who were identified, detained and deported in January of this year, at least 43-percent of them had no prior criminal charges. Ann Colbert is an organizer of the Rowan County Concerned Citizens for migrants. She said the goal of showing a film like Living Undocumented raises awareness of the plight some members community face.
“It is real important to talk to people where they are at and not just to assume that they are not Christian or generous or have good hearts. So, I think a film like this shows the humanity of some of our non-documented neighbors. We are hoping that helps change minds,” Colbert said.
The videos showed in Morehead highlight how communities across the country have united in peaceful protest against ICE. Speakers shared the ways migrants can be helped, including rides to and from work and school, funding grocery and utility bills, neighborhood ICE lookouts, and communication networks established to relay information on ICE busts and live locations.
Community member Goose Howard attended the February meeting of Concerned Citizens for Migrants. He said the federal administration has chosen spectacle and public opinion before policies and ethics. Howard said religion is being weaponized in an attempt to turn neighbors against each other.
“The bible has got a lot of stories of governments trying to force people into one religious practice. If I want to lead others to Christ, I cannot do so through coercion. It has to be genuine belief in it. I always caution against government involvement in religious practice,” Howard said.
Ítza Zavala-Garret, a Spanish and Gender studies Professor at MSU, helps CCM communicate with migrants. She said a large part of the Rowan County economy, from sawmill work to local hotel chains and restaurants, is generated by migrants.
“They get special permission for doing that and they are paying taxes. That is really important that in general people know, they pay taxes, that is another misinformation,” Zavala-Garret said.
According to the American Immigration Council only 40-percent of the over 200,000 migrants in Kentucky are naturalized but the migrant population as a whole contributed $1.7 billion in taxes in 2023.
Zavala-Garret said CCM has made a guide for migrants on how to handle law enforcement, where to seek legal advice, and how to reach out to the community for aid while remaining anonymous.
“Some lawyers that take advantage of them. That’s the reason that CCM provides the names of lawyers that are going to orient them, what do to in their cases and migrant situation,” Zavala-Garret said.
Zavalla-Garret said the CCM handbook is available in Spanish at the Rowan County Public Library as well as some churches. She said despite what some officials may claim, the migrant community is good for Rowan County.
“The interest of this government is to portray the migrant community as something negative and it is the opposite. Most of the migrants here are working people, they are very positive for the community to have more diversity to have more empathy, I mean I do not see anything wrong [with] having a migrant community here,” Zavala-Garret.
CCM organizers said anyone who wants to help can start by building a support framework for their migrant neighbors and writing to elected politicians. They recommend learning about the eight ICE detention centers in the Commonwealth and House Bill 47, which would take ICE cooperation decisions out of the hands of local governments, jails, and law enforcement agencies and into the hands of the state government.
The group’s next showing will be episode 2 of Living Undocumented, March 13 at First Baptist Church on Main Street in Morehead at 5:30 p.m.