Elected officials decried recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at New Haven’s Tweed Airport during a press conference on Monday, drawing attention to the latest example of public spaces like courthouses, city streets and school bus stops that have been targeted by ICE during the Trump administration’s deportation push.
The recent arrests are part of growing operations in Connecticut in recent months, including more than 100 arrests during an operation that centered in Danbury in August.
Among those arrested at Tweed was Deng Dhieu Kuach Deng, a native of South Sudan and a freshman basketball player known as “Deng Deng,” who attends Southern Connecticut State University. He was arrested on Sept. 4th while traveling domestically in the U.S. and attempting to fly out of New Haven’s Tweed Airport and was released on Sept. 16. An Ecuadorian student who lives in Fairfield County was also arrested this month and released weeks later.
ICE did not return a request for comment from the Connecticut Mirror about the recent cases. ICE issued a separate statement defending its detention of the Southern Connecticut student, saying that all people in the country illegally “receive due process.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that he met with four young people on Monday morning who had been detained by ICE in the last three weeks — two at Tweed, two at Bradley International Airport — including Deng Deng.
“None of them have any criminal record,” Blumenthal said. “They are not citizens of the United States, but they have a legal basis to be in this country.”
In each case, those detained were released after stays of two to three weeks in ICE detention, according to Glenn Formica, an attorney with The American Immigrant Legal Clinic.
“What people really need to understand is that it’s not like they get picked up and released. They get picked up and just traumatized,” said Formica, who worked on the recent cases.
Formica said that such detainees are not entitled to the same rights, such as the right to a court-appointed attorney, as people held under criminal charges. They are kept in “hyper stress” conditions: “They’re sleeping on floors, cement floors with foil blankets for days, broken toilets, dirty water. They have to pay for phone calls,” he said. “It’s just like one horrifying experience after another, and you’re scared at the time.”
At the press conference, Formica called on attorneys across the state to get involved, at a moment when the crush of cases has advocates sounding the alarm about the lack of due process.
“My call is to every attorney: I don’t care if you do real estate. I don’t care if you do elder law. You need to step up now,” Formica said. “You hold the line here, or there’s no more line. We go over, after 250 years, into an abyss that we have never thought was possible, and the fight is now for attorneys.”
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker expressed thanks for the support of such attorneys in assuring Deng’s release.
“Thanks to that collective action and advocacy of many people here — and not in this room as well — and at Southern Connecticut State University, the student was released from ICE detention,” Elicker said. “He’s now back on Southern’s campus with his classmates, exactly where he should be, studying and being a productive member of our community.”
Elicker said that he has communicated to the airport authority board that “We do not want the airport to cooperate with ICE beyond what it is legally required to do. Travel should be about bringing people together. It shouldn’t be about tearing people apart.”
Formica advised those visiting the country to exercise caution when using using airlines.
“Even if you have status, you should be very careful or not use the airlines,” he said. “And I would fear for even visitors to this country getting on domestic flights with the way ICE is handling this.”
Elicker also urged caution: “I think that people need to use their own judgement about anywhere they go right now, because we’ve just seen over and over again ICE changing their tactics and targeting people where they think they can detain them.”
Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, described “agents wearing Tweed access badges and parking in private airport lots” conducting arrests. She said that the recent arrests in Connecticut are part of a larger phenomenon of information sharing between the Transportation Security Administration and ICE.
“Because of this, 800 people throughout our nation have been arrested at airports, including people with pending asylum cases, with green card applications, and with work permits,” she said. “Today, one of the most ordinary acts of American life — getting on a plane — has become a trap, even for people following the process.”
Matos called for four immediate actions:
“First, we need to end the secret pipeline of passenger data that goes from TSA to ICE. Second, this administration needs to stop the appalling practice of stopping people at airports. Third, Tweed needs to stop being complicit with ICE. That means that Avports, the company that operates Tweed, and the New Haven Airport Authority must do everything possible to honor this city’s proud immigrant stance. Finally, ICE needs to get out. They need to get out of our city, and they need to get out of our state.”
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
