ICE Agents Invade Danbury, Connecticut, Kidnapping Parents From School Bus Stops

We go to Danbury, Connecticut, where residents held a mass demonstration this week to protest recent immigration arrests and to support the city’s immigrant community. Danbury, like many other communities across the United States, has been the target of a spike in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, including local reports of ICE arresting parents at school bus stops.

“We really have been describing it as the administration terrorizing our city, because that is what it felt like. The streets were empty. Kids stayed home from practice. Kids stayed home from school,” says Juliana Soares, the lead organizer for Danbury Unites for Immigrants. “Masked agents often would shut down the street to just abduct people. … They just do a gross display of force and intimidation in a grocery store parking lot, where they’re just walking around, kind of hunting their next target.”

TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

More than a thousand people rallied in Danbury, Connecticut, Wednesday night to protest recent immigration arrests in Connecticut. There have been roughly 100 ICE arrests of immigrants in recent weeks, more than half in the city of Danbury. At least 60 businesses in the city also closed their doors for “A Day Without Immigrants” in support of the city’s immigrant community. Among the arrests, local officials reported parents were picked up when they brought their children to school bus stops. The kids went into the bus, and then the parents were taken by ICE.

This is Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy last week.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: There has been an obscene uptick in arrests here in Danbury. In particular, this morning, there was a hunting of families happening at school bus stops, in which ICE apparently waited for kids to board the bus, and then picked up the parents, just to intentionally terrorize the kids, so that when they get off the bus, their parents are gone, in detention, feeling traumatized, alone, scared to death. This has to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: CNN’s Dana Bash asked so-called border czar Tom Homan about the bus stop arrests.

DANA BASH: Are ICE officers detaining parents at school bus stops?

TOM HOMAN: ICE isn’t in the business of terrorizing children. That’s — that’s — that’s just — that’s just political fire. ICE is out there enforcing law that was enacted by Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: So, he didn’t deny what ICE was doing.

On Thursday, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal hosted a town hall in Danbury to hear directly from officials and community members. The advocacy group Danbury Unites for Immigrants says detentions occurred at day laborer gathering spots and a Latino grocery store, and that two of its legal observers were shoved by officers, with one hospitalized with injuries from pepper spray.

For more, we’re joined by Juliana Soares, a lead organizer for Danbury Unites for Immigrants, joining us from Danbury.

Explain what’s happening right now, Juliana. And why Danbury?

JULIANA SOARES: Yeah. So, Danbury has really become the epicenter of ICE violence here in Connecticut. As you mentioned, at least 65 people were abducted over four days. That’s over 65 families that have had their entire lives turned upside down and uprooted.

I think that Danbury is targeted because Danbury is a diverse city. It’s one of the most diverse cities in the country. And we know that our diversity is our strength, and that makes us kind of like an easy target for this administration right now at this time, unfortunately.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Caitlyn [sic], what we’re seeing now, that in the first year of the Trump administration [inaudible] these big-splash, high-profile raids with television cameras, and now, since the firing of Kristi Noem as head of Homeland Security, we’re now seeing a completely different approach for the same purposes. Now we’re seeing, basically, thousands of people disappeared, [inaudible] abducted, as you say. What has been the impact on the Danbury community, which has a significant immigrant population?

JULIANA SOARES: Yeah, we can feel the fear in our community, in the streets. Last week, we really have been describing it as the administration terrorizing our city, because that is what it felt like. The streets were empty. Kids stayed home from practice. Kids stayed home from school. Kids were seeing this happen from inside the bus, as agents, and masked agents often, would shut down the street to just abduct people. So, it really has been terrorizing.

And we have seen this spectacle that these ICE agents have been doing and escalating alongside. They’ve come here with cameras. They just do, like, a gross display of force and intimidation in a grocery store parking lot, where they’re just walking around, kind of hunting their next target. And the community sees that. You know, they drive by. These are, like I said, kids that are coming home from school on the bus, and they see that. And everybody’s just really scared.

So, we tried to come together to have solidarity and to show this community that, you know, there are people that are here for them, and we are going to support them through this, and we’ll work through this together.

AMY GOODMAN: Juliana, can you talk about what happens at the school buses, at the bus stops?

JULIANA SOARES: Yeah, so, we saw — this was last week. It was the first week of school. And as Chris Murphy said, the senator, you know, we saw and heard from community members that ICE was stopping at school bus stops, and they would take people, take parents after they had just dropped off their kids. And not satisfied in doing this just in the morning, they did that in the afternoon. Whether or not they were targeting specific bus stops, they were on bus routes. We have, you know, videos of kids inside the bus screaming ”ICE” in Danbury. So, while Tom Homan said that, you know, he’s not aware of it, our community, our kids are very aware of ICE presence and of the ICE violence that is happening within our city.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Juliana, apologies for my senior moment of misidentifying you, but —

JULIANA SOARES: It’s OK.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — what is Danbury Unites for Immigrants doing right now to support these families?

JULIANA SOARES: Excuse me. We’re doing a lot, but it’s still not enough. You know, we have volunteers mobilizing as early as 5:30 in the morning to try to document ICE presence, to try to be witness to what’s going on. We have a helpline to try to field calls from families that are searching for missing relatives. We support people that are in post-detention, whether it’s with grocery cards, giving people rides, picking up school supplies, that was much needed this week, and trying to connect them with legal assistance, as well. So, we’re trying to do a lot. We’re trying to connect with our community members. But like I said, it’s still not enough. And we’re working around the clock, because what happened last week was horrendous.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting that the Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves was undocumented into his twenties, said he — said the fear he felt as a child is different from what his community is dealing with now. This is Mayor Alves.

MAYOR ROBERTO ALVES: This isn’t a uniquely Danbury story. It is going on all across our country. It’s up to us to document it. It’s up to us to talk about it. I’ve thanked Danbury Unites for Immigrants immensely over the last week. I’ve asked folks to join their ranks so we can have more people out there. I’ve also asked them to make sure they’re careful, that they’re not also taking it too far with a group that’s taking it too far on them, because that group has shown that they will kill American citizens for doing what these folks are doing to keeping our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers safe. We have seen — and it’s not anecdotal, it’s through the great investigative work of these advocates — that the majority of the folks that they are grabbing, that they are detaining, that they’re putting in dark, dark places that aren’t traceable right now, but we’re starting to learn about them, before they go and get processed somewhere else, is because of the work that these community groups are doing.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the Danbury Mayor Alves, who came to this country undocumented until his twenties. We’ll continue what’s happening in Danbury and around the country here on Democracy Now! Juliana Soares, I want to thank you for being with us, lead organizer for Danbury Unites for Immigrants.

Coming up, next week is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. We’ll look at what happened at Windows on the World, on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. More than 70 workers died on September 11th. It’s been called the U.N. of workers. We’ll look at the new documentary, Top of the World. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: Billy Bragg performing “Why We Build the Wall” here in our Democracy Now! studio.