Protestors Call To Abolish ICE At Hartford Immigrant Rights Rally

Immigrant rights groups in Connecticut are demanding that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, ICE, be abolished, at a protest on Monday. Organizers are protesting outside the federal building on Main Street in Hartford because there is an ICE office there. 

They say their action coincides with the expected opening today of a new ICE detention facility in San Diego, California, which, they say, is part of a federal government effort to erect new camps to house an estimated 47,000 migrants under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. They say this week the federal government is also expected to ramp up the criminalization of migrants at the border by jailing immigrants while they await their immigration status, which is a civil, not a criminal, offense.

Protestors allege it’s an attempt to create profit for business by keeping immigrants in private prisons before departing them.

Organizers of the protest include the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, immigrant families directly affected by deportations, Dreamers, local clergy and the ACLU of Connecticut among others.