More than 60 people were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week in Danbury. Advocates and officials are scrambling to keep up.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Laura Tillman to discuss her article, written with Katy Golvala and Sasha Allen, “In Danbury, some are hiding from ICE. Others are following them,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read their story here.
WSHU: Hello, Laura. You and your colleagues have done a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how local activists deal with ICE activities in recent weeks. What prompted you to look into this?
LT: There was a press conference last Wednesday in Danbury where Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Congresswoman Jahana Hayes (D-CT-5), Governor Ned Lamont (D), all spoke about a series of ICE arrests happening in Connecticut, and specifically focused on Danbury. The mayor of Danbury, Roberto Alves (D), also spoke at that press conference, as did some members of Danbury Unites for Immigrants, and it was clear that it was a very emotional press conference. It was kind of an unusual press conference to me as a reporter. I'd never seen, I don't think, the governor, for example, leave the podium as he was answering a question because he was being shouted over by people in the crowd. The mayor of Danbury was also facing a lot of blowback from maybe between five to 10 people in the crowd who were kind of talking at times back to speakers or over speakers, sort of demanding answers or accountability.
So I just thought, wow, there's a lot going on in Danbury right now. There's a lot of emotion around this, and at the same time, it's clear that there are people who have been doing a lot of work to support this to support this community, and sometimes when an elected official comes into town, you know there's a way that that's that can amplify an issue, but there's also a way that maybe we don't get to see all the grassroots work that's been going on the other you know, 364 days of the year in this community. So I asked one of the members of the group if I could spend some time shadowing them and seeing this whole thing play out through their eyes and behind the scenes of what they're experiencing.
WSHU: Now let's talk about the woman from Hartford that you actually followed. She's a volunteer with the Danbury Unites for Immigrants. That's like a rapid-response team they've set up in Danbury. Now, could you talk about this woman and what drove her to take part in this, and what she actually experienced the day that you followed her?
LT: Yeah, I think that, you know, for a lot of people who are involved in this, they feel very intensely that they want to do everything they can to protect this community. The day that I spent with her and other members of the group, there was an event that happened in the morning where five people who were on their way to work, they were apparently being followed by ICE, and then there is video footage of what happened next, in which one of the men was pulled out of a car, lying face down, surrounded by agents, and then was tased multiple times by agents. Then those agents called 911 because the man was having trouble speaking. There was a discussion of him saying he had hypertension, so he was brought to the hospital. ICE agents were then at the hospital. The family and the attorney for the family were trying to gain access to the man in the hospital, and meanwhile, the rapid response team was just trying to do everything they could to support this family, to support this man, and see if they could get this man released.
WSHU: Now you spoke with the man's nephew. What did he have to say? Just tell us a little bit about his nephew, and what did he have to say about this incident?
LT: So part of the story is also about kind of his experience of the day, trying to do what he could to help to go to the hospital to try to find medical records, to be in contact with attorneys, and kind of this this way that this family's you know life is turned upside down by by this event with the tasing and and detainment of the uncle.
WSHU: Now let's get back to Mayor Roberto Alves. Could you tell us a little bit about how he's looking at this whole situation that's happening as he leads the city of Danbury?
LT: Yeah, you know, the mayor is someone who has faced some criticism from members of the community that he hasn't been doing enough to speak out. Mayor Alves himself does have this personal story in which he himself was an undocumented immigrant as a child and was brought here at age five from Brazil with his parents. So he does seem to have a lot of emotion and empathy about the experience of these children in his city and what they're going through. I think at the same time he was expressing that there’s sort of more to it behind the scenes in terms of the push and pull of, you know, not wanting to turn his city into a target of this administration. He's kind of in an interesting situation right now in terms of how he's trying to negotiate with these different constituents and also just navigate this issue.
It kind of made me think of how Governor Ned Lamont has been kind of threading the needle at times with the Trump administration and speaking up about policies, but also trying not to make Connecticut sort of a specific target, the way that some other states have been targeted.
WSHU: In the meantime, it doesn't seem as if ICE is going to change their tactics or slow down in any way.
LT: We didn't hear about as much activity over the weekend, and you know, I think that we've seen these operations do kind of go from place to place. They come to a place, they target it for a while, and they move on. So it sort of remains to be seen in Connecticut how quickly that will happen. But we are watching to see, you know, what happens next with these kinds of arrests.
WSHU: Well, thank you so much, Laura. Really appreciate you doing this, and it's a fascinating look at what is actually going on on the ground right now.
LT: Thank you.
