Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal returned to Danbury on Thursday to compile testimony for an upcoming report on “brutality” he alleges was committed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in the city last week.
“We’re here to bear witness and to build a record that can lead to accountability and changing the practices of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, if necessary by withholding funding,” Blumenthal said.
Immigrant advocates and community members gathered for the public panel discussion at Western Connecticut State University, shortly after Blumenthal met privately with over a dozen individuals affected by last week’s ICE sweeps.
“[We’re] seeking to document what is happening on the streets of America and in communities so that the American people will be as outraged as most people in Danbury are,” Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal said the people he spoke with in private were too fearful to speak publicly, but that their accounts would be documented for his report.
“The stories that I heard were absolutely gripping and riveting – heartbreaking,” Blumenthal said. “Not only the emotion, but the trauma – the lasting trauma that will be created for children who come home at the end of the day and find their parents gone.”
He heard reports of “elementary and middle school children in school buses watching ICE throw people to the ground, Taser them, manhandle them, physical brutality they watched in real time.”
Making sense of who was targeted
In response to a question about recent ICE operations in Connecticut last week, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said, “ICE agents uphold our nation’s immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, including in Connecticut.”
The spokesperson then attached five mugshots of individuals they said ICE has arrested in Connecticut who were “public safety threats.”
Blumenthal said ICE was not targeting “the worst of the worst,” as the agency has claimed.
“These people have no criminal history,” Blumenthal said of those taken by ICE last week in Danbury. “They’re done nothing wrong, literally nothing, not even a traffic infraction.”
Blumenthal said “maybe six or seven” of those arrested last week had serious criminal records, “out of the hundred or so that I think were arrested.”
Attorneys report challenges
Blumenthal spoke on a panel alongside Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves, immigration attorneys, and local immigrant advocates.
Glenn Formica, an attorney with the New Haven-based American Immigrant Legal Clinic, said he was representing some of those arrested last week. He said that in some cases, he was denied access to his clients.
“As a lawyer, if you tell me I can’t see my client, that is the worst thing you can tell me, because that says the whole system is broken,” Formica said.
Formica said he has clients from Connecticut who have been transported to detention facilities in Colorado, New Hampshire, Mississippi, and Louisiana, among other states.
Formica called on ICE agents to think about their actions morally.
“When this is over and we win – when good wins – you do not want to be remembered for the rest of your life as someone who did such evil,” Formica said. “Keep that in mind. You will answer for it someday.”
Danbury marches on
Carina Bandhauer is a Western Connecticut State University sociology professor and a member of the board of the immigrant advocacy organization CT Students for a Dream. She said Danbury is a “peaceful city.”
Thursday’s panel came the day after more than 1,000 people rallied peacefully in Danbury on behalf of the immigrant community. The demonstration was attended by Alves, Blumenthal, Sen. Chris Murphy, and Gov. Ned Lamont, among other officials.
“The only time that this city is not safe is when ICE is here,” Bandhauer said. “They’re absolutely terrorizing our community, and when they do take people, they’re using unjustified violence and they’re using illegal forms of violence.”
