Carmen Lanche remembers the morning when her husband was detained by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement back in 2019. He’d just dropped their son off at school in Norwalk, and she was getting their daughter ready.
Lanche said ICE agents showed up at her door and they looked like police officers. “I opened the door, thinking that my husband had been in an accident,” she said.
“When they told me that they had detained my husband, I was in shock. Without thinking about it for one more second, I shut the door in that instant. I couldn’t believe what was happening. My eight-year-old daughter and I cried together,” Lanche, an immigrant from Ecuador who is also the executive director of Comunidades Sin Fronteras, said in Spanish.
Immigrant advocacy groups like Comunidades Sin Fronteras are now calling on the Connecticut legislature to strengthen a state law that limits when local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents. Republican state lawmakers said earlier this year they were seeking to roll back those limits.
Both responses come after recent actions by Congress and the Trump Administration to remove barriers to deportation and expand immigration enforcement efforts.
Connecticut’s Trust Act, originally passed in 2013 and updated in 2019, generally prohibits local law enforcement from arresting people solely on the basis of a detainer — a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that police hold a person for up to 48 hours so federal agents can pick them up.
Local law enforcement and corrections officials in Connecticut may only comply with a federal detainer request if the person in their custody has been convicted or plead guilty to class A or B felony — crimes like murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, robbery and first-degree manslaughter, if ICE presents a judicial warrant, or if the person is on a terrorist watch list.
The law also limits the amount of information local police can provide to ICE without consent, and it prevents prisons and detention centers from allowing ICE to “roam their facilities,” Janelle Medeiros, a civil rights lawyer in the state Attorney General’s office, wrote in a memo earlier this year.
On Monday, about a hundred people rallied outside City Hall in Hartford then marched to the Capitol carrying signs written in English and Spanish. Standing outside the Capitol, they cheered as state legislators, faith leaders and heads of organizations like Comunidades Sin Fronteras spoke out against the actions of the federal government and in favor of preventing deportations.
Sen. Jorge Cabrera, D-Hamden, and Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, spoke at the rally, throwing their support behind the advocates and immigrants living in Connecticut.
“There are jobs here that other communities just don’t do. There are things that people contribute to make our communities better that come straight from immigrants in our community,” Felipe, whose family came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, told rallygoers.
“When we talk about the Trust Act, we talk about making sure that there is dignity. Make sure that there is respect given to people who live in our state of Connecticut and give back to it every single day,” he said.
Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said in a statement that the Trust Act had been created to help communities in a “time of recent uncertainty” around interactions between law enforcement and people who feared interacting with them because of their immigration status. Juan Fonseca Tapia, a campaign manager contracted with CT Students for a Dream and one of the event’s organizers, read Winfield’s statement aloud.
“We live in a time, again, of uncertainty. And the fear that is being created now does nothing to increase public safety,” the statement read.
Several of Winfield’s colleagues in the legislature disagree.
In January, a group of Republican state legislators called for the elimination of certain parts of the Trust Act. House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said he planned to propose a bill that would allow local law enforcement to turn over immigrants arrested for class A, B, C felonies or a “crime of family violence.”
Class C felonies include 2nd degree manslaughter — including as the result of drunk driving — 2nd degree sexual assault, enticing a minor and assault of a public safety or health worker.
Candelora argued during a press conference that the law protected violent criminals, and he said he would like to see some of the changes to the act made in 2019 repealed.
In an emailed statement Monday, Senate Republicans Steven Harding, R-Brookfield, Eric Berthel, R-Bethel and Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, said they’re seeking to roll back what they called the “disastrous effects” of the Trust Act.
“Try to find anyone on the street, regardless of political affiliation, who supports shielding violent criminal illegal immigrants from federal authorities,” the statement read. “This is common sense, and poll after poll tells us that Republicans are on the right side of this issue. We must address this serious threat to public safety.”
Chelsea-Infinity Gonzalez, public policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, told CT Mirror that the organization is looking to create a way for people to report violations of the Trust Act and seek legal recourse.
“For us, that really is the only way that we’ll see a change … otherwise it’s very symbolic, and we’re looking for something real right now,” Gonzalez said. She added that ACLU wants to prevent ICE from arresting people inside courthouses, and they want tighter restrictions around data sharing between state agencies and ICE.
Tabitha Sookdeo, the executive director of CT Students for a Dream, told CT Mirror that her organization is particularly concerned about data being shared from the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issues drive-only licenses to people without social security numbers. She’s also concerned about financial aid data collected by the Department of Education and health insurance information maintained by the Department of Social Services. Both agencies provide services to undocumented immigrants.
Connecticut is not the only state with laws preventing local agencies from assisting ICE with deportation efforts. Last month, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against the state of Illinois over a similar restriction.
Lanche, who told her story at the rally Monday, said that after her husband was detained, she spent much of her savings on legal representation. Her husband was transferred to Hartford, and then to a migrant detention center in Boston, where he fell and later suffered a stroke. With all the legal bills, Lanche said she struggled to pay rent and they lost their apartment.
Eventually, Lanche’s husband managed to win his immigration case and his health has improved. “Thank God, the immigration process is over. We have won it. But all of this has led to a lot of suffering, a lot of stress, and trauma for everyone,” she said.
Lanche said she thinks strengthening the Trust Act would save children and families from a lot of pain and would keep families together. “No one deserves to go through all [this] bad stuff,” she said. “I want this law to protect everyone.”