U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy introduced legislation on Thursday to bar immigration enforcement operations from being carried out on playgrounds, child care facilities and school bus stops, a move in response to recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Danbury.
The four-day ICE operation in Connecticut resulted in 118 arrests. Murphy has repeatedly decried the presence of ICE officers at school bus stops, and while Trump administration border czar Tom Homan initially said he was unaware of such arrests, video released by Danbury United for Immigrants on social media appears to show such events taking place.
“No child should see an ICE agent dragging a parent or a student away at a school bus stop, a playground, a school, or day care or anywhere. But that is exactly what we experienced in Danbury a few weeks ago,” Carolina Bortolleto, a Danbury Unites for Immigrants volunteer, said in a statement. “What should have been the first day of school, when students should have been excited to see their friends again after the summer or excited for a new backpack or new school supplies, they were instead terrified as they saw firsthand masked agents dragging away community members. As a society, this should be unacceptable.”
Bortolleto said that the legislation is a step in the right direction.
“We’re glad that Sen. Murphy saw firsthand the impact of ICE’s violence on our Danbury community and is taking action,” she said. “We need our federal elected officials to do everything in their power to limit the violence and fear that ICE is inflicting in our communities — starting with refusing to give another dollar to ICE in the upcoming reconciliation negotiations.”
The bills prohibits agents, officers and employees of DHS or those acting under authority of the agency from conducting operations in child care facilities, school bus stops and playgrounds.
Murphy also supports legislation that would similarly prevent immigration enforcement actions at other sensitive locations such as hospitals, schools and courthouses. The Senate version of the “Protecting Sensitive Locations Act” was introduced by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., early last year, about a month after President Donald Trump took office.
In a statement, Murphy said that the bills “should be a no-brainer.”
“The American people have seen horrifying videos of ICE agents terrorizing our streets and instilling fear in communities, including in Danbury recently,” he wrote. “Kids should be safe from violent enforcement — period — but especially on the playground, at daycare, and waiting for the bus. … How far is this corrupt administration willing to defend an unpopular, illegal mass deportation campaign?”
The Connecticut senator has been a major of proponent of seeking changes to ICE’s practices, an effort that got a lot of support among Democrats in the wake of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens.
Murphy serves as the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, which oversees funding for ICE. During government funding negotiations, he said he wouldn’t support new funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security unless certain reforms to ICE were attached to it.
Some of the guardrails demanded by Democrats included tightening rules around arrest warrants, ending roving patrols, ensuring independent investigations, and new protocols for ICE agents, such as banning face coverings, wearing body cameras and displaying proper identification.
But they never came to fruition, and DHS was in a shutdown for more than two months. Both parties blamed each other for the breakdown in negotiations. To fund ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Republicans ultimately pursued a party-line bill under the budget reconciliation process. That allowed them to fund ICE and Border Patrol with nearly $70 billion through the end of Trump’s term without reforms.
“We have a constitutional responsibility to only fund a government that is acting lawfully,” Murphy said in the spring. “This isn’t about politics. This is about our legal constitutional obligation.”
After passing a stopgap bill to fund the government at existing levels through the November elections, Congress will need to tackle full-year funding for federal agencies again when it runs out in mid-December — and DHS is likely to be a point of contention.
But getting Murphy’s trio of bills through a divided Congress faces incredibly steep odds, since similar legislation and ICE reforms stalled over the past year. Also, Congress has a very small window to legislate the rest of the year. The House is out of session through the election, and the Senate leaves town at the end of the month.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
