Back in February 2024, a controversial bill came up in the U.S. House of Representatives that would have allowed immigrants to be deported if they were convicted of driving under the influence.
Connecticut U.S. Reps. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and Jim Himes, D-4th District, voted in favor.
The Senate didn't take up the bill at the time. But now, with Republicans controlling the White House as well as Congress, a similar bill is in play — and Connecticut's representatives are rethinking their roles in an evolving political atmosphere.
Hayes and Courtney voted against the new bill last month.
"I’m looking at these things through a very different lens — in the context of the environment that we’re in and just really trying to consider what the end goal of my Republican colleagues is on this legislation," Hayes told The Connecticut Mirror after the recent vote on the DUI bill.
Although some Connecticut lawmakers began the session in favor of certain enforcement efforts against immigrants with criminal histories, they are now balking at an enforcement system they see as heavy-handed and in conflict with people's legal rights while in the country.
Through legislation like H.R. 875, the Laken Riley Act and the budget bill that passed earlier this month, the GOP-led Congress has aligned itself with the Trump administration's larger strategy of focusing on detentions and deportations while eliminating some opportunities for immigrants to enter or remain in the U.S.
Such legislative action could shake up the economy and communities in Connecticut, and some immigration lawyers are starting to see the ripple effects from new laws.
The legislation
The title of H.R. 875, "Jeremy and Angel Seay and Sergeant Brandon Mendoza Protect Our Communities from DUIs Act of 2025," references three people who were killed, in two separate instances, when an unauthorized migrant who was driving drunk collided with them in a driving accident. Jeremy and Angel Seay were newlyweds in Alabama; Brandon Mendoza, 32, was struck while driving home from work in Mesa, Arizona.
During debate on the bill, Republican sponsor Barry Moore of Alabama said he knew the Seays personally. He called it a "simple common-sense bill" that he pointed out garnered significant Democratic support last time.
When local groups heard H.R. 875 was coming up for a vote, immigrant rights advocates in Connecticut started to urge constituents to reach out to the members of Congress who supported it in the past.
“We MUST speak out. CT’s Reps Jahana Hayes (CT-5), Joe Courtney (CT-2), and Jim Himes (CT-4) voted YES on similar bills before. Their offices aren’t hearing enough opposition,” read a June 24 Facebook message urging people to call and text the representatives.
The push was an effort to double down after Hayes and Courtney voted for the Laken Riley Act, the first bill Trump signed into law this year. (Himes and the rest of the delegation opposed it.) It requires U.S. officials to detain any immigrant without legal status who has been arrested, charged or convicted of burglary, larceny, theft, shoplifting or a crime that causes death or serious bodily injury.
Courtney noted the distinctions between the immigration measures the House voted on this year: He sees Laken Riley Act as a “detention bill” and H.R. 875 as a “deportation bill.”
“Detention doesn’t mean you’re deported, and it still left open the door for due process and a hearing,” Courtney said in an interview with CT Mirror. “If you read [H.R. 875], it creates sort of an impression, at least, that there is no due process because they amended the deportation statute.”
He added the administration’s changes to Temporary Protected Status — legal protections for people who are from countries with ongoing armed conflict and environmental disasters — are raising fears of deportation, particularly for Haitians and Venezuelans. TPS protections have ended for Venezuela, and a federal judge blocked the termination in September for Haitians. Courtney’s office said he has received a lot of calls on immigration since Trump took office, particularly around TPS.
An aide said the congressman closely tracks input from those who call or write in and uses it to help inform his votes. On H.R. 875 specifically, his D.C. office only received outreach from constituents who were against the bill.
“Who would have thought you’d have a State Department and a Department of Homeland Security that basically dismisses due process as a requirement, which the 14th Amendment clearly creates for all persons. And that’s just getting brushed aside,” Courtney said. “It’s just a far different legal climate. It’s not even about control of the House. It’s really about those two departments.”
Hayes, however, said in April she regretted her vote in support of the Laken Riley Act. The provision about detaining someone over assaulting a law enforcement officer stuck out for her, but she said that part of the bill “was not worth the tradeoff of what I’m seeing now.”
“There’s already laws on the books about DUIs, and if someone is in the process already, that can be considered and addressed. But that’s not what [Republicans] are looking to do," Hayes said. “I’ve said after the Laken Riley vote and hearing from my constituents that I was really optimistic that we’re trying to work together, but [H.R. 875] doesn’t do that.”
Constanza Segovia, co-founder of Hartford Deportation Defense, echoed Hayes.
“There's already a process in place for people to be held accountable in the context of a DUI or driving under the influence. People should not have more grave consequences based on their immigration status,” she said.
For Himes, he said he backed H.R. 875 because it deports non-U.S. citizens only after they have been convicted in court. (The bill also bars entry into the country for any non-U.S. citizen who has been arrested for, or admits to, having driven under the influence.)
“H.R. 875 would establish new grounds for deportation for non-citizens only after they’ve had their day in court and been convicted of a crime. I supported this legislation because it maintained clear procedural due process,” Himes said in a statement.
But Himes took issue with other moves by the Trump administration, including masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting international college students, or Alligator Alcatraz, the new detention center built in Florida’s Everglades. He said those actions “call into question the president’s commitment to faithfully executing laws as he is sworn to do.”
Happening in Connecticut
Some immigration lawyers say they’re seeing some initial effects of new laws on the books.
Dana Bucin, an immigration attorney with Harris Beach Murtha LLC in Hartford, said one of her clients had recently been affected by the Laken Riley Act. A 22-year resident with children who are U.S. citizens, he was picked up by ICE and is currently being detained because of a past arrest on a minor charge that later resulted in a not-guilty finding, Bucin said. Now, she said, she’ll have to prove to ICE and the court that her client was found not guilty.
“My guess is that they're just picking up anybody with an arrest, whether that arrest resulted in a conviction or not,” Bucin said, adding that it was possible ICE wasn’t able to see the final result of her client’s case and assumed he’d been convicted.
Bucin said the DUI bill penalizing permanent green card holders could open the door to a “slippery slope” for U.S. citizens.
But Hartford immigration attorney Chris Llinas said he saw the Laken Riley Act as largely duplicating laws that already existed.
“Realistically a lot of folks who are getting locked up for immigration reasons … are going to end up locked up anyway, regardless of Laken Riley,” Llinas said.
Maggie Mitchell Smith, the executive director of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS, said she was concerned about the impact that the Laken Riley Act and H.R. 875 could have on refugees, particularly young people between the ages of 15 and 25 who often have very little English and don’t have the necessary skills to make it in the workforce.
“If they get into trouble, the consequences for them are significant. They will be returned to places that in many places they have never even set foot in. Many of them were born in refugee camps,” Smith said.
Richard Stern, a New Haven native and the director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told CT Mirror that the Laken Riley Act was codifying into law policies that often get changed based on the administration in power. He added that although the Trump administration had begun by focusing on deporting criminals, entering the country without permission was still a crime.
“ The president made campaign promises to deport as many illegal aliens as possible, not just ones who have committed violent defenses,” he said. “Generally speaking, people that come here illegally, these are people who jump the line on people who've waited years to come here legally and done it by the book. These are people who are frankly involved — and sometimes they don't really know what they're getting into — in these kind of black-market labor situations that a lot of times benefit employers here or the criminal cartels that kind of manage them.”
He said he wasn’t surprised by the Democrats’ vacillation on support for the border, although he said that past bills touting support for the border were a bit “misleading” because they were more geared toward funding measures like additional immigration judges. (Trump’s big tax bill provides some funding for hiring additional judges.)
“ Liberals in government of the past do what they think is in their best interest. And so if they've got donors, they want this kind of labor group or that labor group, they make it happen,” he said.
Tabitha Sookdeo, the executive director of CT Students 4 a Dream — which was part of the campaign for constituent outreach on H.R. 875 — said she felt that she hadn’t done enough to make it clear to federal representatives how their votes affect communities in Connecticut.
“ I think a lot of us have been focusing on state protections and state provisions and focusing on public education on a state level. And really what we need to be pivoting towards is this communications or this public education work on a federal level,” said Sookdeo.
The DUI bill will now head to the Senate, though the timing for a vote is unclear. But Segovia said she was less concerned about U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal based on “their track record.” Murphy and Blumenthal both voted against the Laken Riley Act in January.
The budget bill
Enhancing criminal penalties is not the only action Congress has taken that will affect immigration. Perhaps the most significant changes lie in the sweeping budget reconciliation bill, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” that passed earlier this month.
Democrats all voted against the bill, with Connecticut’s delegation decrying cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance that will affect people across the U.S., many of whom are low-income.
The bill will also prevent many immigrants from accessing Medicaid and SNAP benefits, a change that Mitchell Smith says will be particularly problematic for refugees. She said that because of their proximity to Yale University, her agency often receives people who have complex, chronic medical needs. Their care is paid for through Medicaid.
And while refugees work, she said, that doesn’t mean their jobs will offer health insurance.
“It’s taking a couple of generations now … for refugees to be able to find their footing and have the kind of employment that includes a decent health care plan,” she said.
The bill also includes extensive funding for border enforcement, as well as a number of fees for asylum seekers and immigrants on temporary statuses. And while Llinas acknowledged that the bill includes funding for immigration judges, he said that funding was miniscule in comparison to how much was being invested in building up ICE.
Connecticut’s federal lawmakers have been supportive of enhanced border funding before. In the last session of Congress, Murphy helped craft an immigration compromise bill that, had it passed, would have approved billions of dollars to increase border funding. But earlier this month, he said he wouldn’t support an even larger pot of money in Trump’s tax bill going toward what he called an “unlawful immigration enforcement system” that could prevent people from applying for asylum.
As Democrats have railed against other parts of the bill, they have paid noticeably less attention to the border measures in the GOP budget bill. When asked about that during a recent press briefing alongside Murphy, Blumenthal acknowledged that Democrats have been less focused on it, arguing that there are even more hurtful provisions inserted to reduce spending. He noted he’s also a proponent of border security and enforcement but argued it’s “just throwing money at a broken system.”
“We’re talking here about programs like Medicaid cuts, nutritional reductions, student loans, energy tax credits, that will be painful for everyday Americans and people in Connecticut,” Blumenthal said. “And the border security part of it is important and it wastes a lot of money and that’s one reason why we’ve been critical of it.”
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
