DETROIT, MI — Police busted a large cockfightinging and illegal 
gambling ring in southwest Detroit Sunday, and about 50 people 
will face immigration deportation hearings, federal authorities
 said Monday. Agents from several federal, state and police agencies
 were involved in the raid at the abandoned building on the 1200
 block of Green Street.
One person was arrested on criminal charges and dozens of 
administrative arrests were made in the raid led by U.S. Immigration
 and Customs Enforcement, a division of Homeland Security 
Investigations. The 1 p.m. raid involved about 140 agents and police
 officers, and came after authorities were tipped off that roosters
 were being used in gambling, according to media reports.
More than 80 people were reportedly inside the building, and 
about 100 birds were confiscated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We made approximately 50 administrative arrests for individuals 
who were in violation of immigration law,” Khaalid Walls, a
 spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
 told the Detroit Free Press. And those individuals will be
 detained in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”
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Walls told WWJ/CBS Detroit the raid capped a months-long 
investigation, which is continuing. The building on Green Street,
near Interstate 75, is in an area of Detroit that is known as Mexicantown.
Cockfighting, a blood sport between two roosters, goes back thousands
 of years in history, but is illegal in all 50 U.S. states and the District
 of Columbia. In Michigan, both cockfighting and dogfighting are
 treated the same as drug and prostitution rings in that they can be
 prosecuted as a criminal enterprise under legislation signed in 2012 
by Gov. Rick Snyder. Cockfighting is punishable by up to 20 years in
 prison and fines of up to $100,000.
At the time, the Michigan law was considered one of the toughest in
 the country.
Photo by Lennart Tange via Flickr Commons