By Anna Heqi­mi
UConn Jour­nal­ism

Knock­ing on doors in an immi­grant neigh­bor­hood on a recent fall after­noon, Selize Mendes was on a mis­sion to inform res­i­dents about their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. 

Mendes, a senior at Dan­bury High School, deliv­ered infor­ma­tion­al pack­ets with Dan­bury Unites for Immi­grants, a com­mu­ni­ty group com­prised of immi­grants and allies. She joined the effort after a close friend who is an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant stopped attend­ing after-school activ­i­ties in ear­ly 2025 for fear of being deport­ed.  

“I want to be her voice,” Mendes said. 

Con­necti­cut is home to more than a half mil­lion immi­grants who com­prise about 20 per­cent of the state’s labor force, accord­ing to a 2023 esti­mate from the Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Coun­cil. About 200,000 immi­grants in the state were esti­mat­ed to be undoc­u­ment­ed in 2023, accord­ing to the Migra­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. 

As detain­ments and depor­ta­tions ramp up as part of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s aggres­sive immi­gra­tion enforce­ment agen­da, Con­necti­cut com­mu­ni­ty groups and res­i­dents are ral­ly­ing to pro­vide sup­port for immi­grants and edu­cate them about their rights. 

Juan Fon­se­ca Tapia cofound­ed Dan­bury Unites for Immi­grants in Sep­tem­ber 2024 to pre­pare for a pos­si­ble sec­ond term for Trump. “We knew that we had to pre­pare,” Fon­se­ca Tapia said. 

He said the group has a helpline num­ber for res­i­dents to call, which acti­vates a rapid response team that has been very effec­tive. The response team is made up of almost 40 indi­vid­u­als, and des­ig­nat­ed mem­bers dri­ve around the city each day to alert res­i­dents if they see sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty. 

The orga­ni­za­tion also has a sup­port group to help the fam­i­lies of detained immi­grants, con­nect­ing them with attor­neys and help­ing to locate their loved ones in the sys­tem. The group has assist­ed 13 fam­i­lies so far, Fon­se­ca Tapia said. One of the detained indi­vid­u­als the group assist­ed has been released and reunit­ed with his fam­i­ly in Dan­bury, he said. 

“We don’t let the kid­nap­pings and the dis­ap­pear­ances hap­pen in obscu­ri­ty and secre­cy,” Fon­se­ca Tapia said. 

The com­mu­ni­ty can­vass­ing days, which began in Octo­ber 2025, pro­vid­ed “direct edu­ca­tion and out­reach,” built com­mu­ni­ty trust and pro­mot­ed the group’s new helpline, he said. 

Marce­lo Can­tu, orig­i­nal­ly from Chile, attend­ed his first can­vass­ing event with the orga­ni­za­tion in ear­ly Novem­ber.  

“There’s injus­tice being com­mit­ted by our very gov­ern­ment,” Can­tu said.  

He said he vis­it­ed over 100 hous­es, but only five opened their doors. Still, he called the day a suc­cess. He dis­trib­uted pack­ets con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion on rights and what to say to ICE agents if encoun­tered. 

Non­prof­its mobi­lize for rapid response 

Tabitha Sookdeo, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Con­necti­cut Stu­dents for a Dream, said fear in her com­mu­ni­ty amid imme­di­ate detain­ments and depor­ta­tions has forced her orga­ni­za­tion to rapid­ly respond. 

The undoc­u­ment­ed youth-led orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed emer­gency pro­to­cols and is expand­ing net­works of immi­gra­tion attor­neys in oth­er states such as Geor­gia, Louisiana and Texas since immi­grants from Con­necti­cut are being quick­ly shipped to deten­tion facil­i­ties around the coun­try. 

The goal, Sookdeo said, is “find the per­son that’s detained and fig­ure out a legal strat­e­gy.”  

She cit­ed the deten­tion of a Wilbur Cross High School stu­dent, Esdrás Zabale­ta-Ramirez, in New Haven while he was work­ing at a car wash. Her group and part­ner orga­ni­za­tions cre­at­ed a depor­ta­tion defense fund for Zabale­ta-Ramirez’s legal fees. 

Sookdeo is orig­i­nal­ly from Guyana and became a U.S. cit­i­zen through mar­riage in 2022. As a for­mer undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant, Sookdeo said that she didn’t have to go through near­ly as much as undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants do today. 

Her group hopes to build rela­tion­ships with polit­i­cal lead­ers and donors and gain new mem­bers through local chap­ters. 

“I don’t want peo­ple to feel bad for us,” Sookdeo said. “I want peo­ple to stand up and fight with us.” 

Involved with the group since high school, Emer­son Zece­na said that ongo­ing immi­gra­tion enforce­ment prompt­ed him to cofound the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut chap­ter of Con­necti­cut Stu­dents for a Dream in Sep­tem­ber 2025. He said it’s his way of giv­ing a “voice to the voice­less.”

“ICE needs to be held account­able for their bar­bar­ic actions and dehu­man­iz­ing nature they have toward undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who are just try­ing to make a liv­ing,” said Zece­na, the son of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. 

Bar­bara Lopez, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Make the Road Con­necti­cut, a com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tion work­ing for immi­grant jus­tice, said her orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides direct legal ser­vices, health­care sup­port and rapid response. 

“I can tes­ti­fy that there has been a lot of hunger for com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to be heard and seen, and that’s what I am pas­sion­ate about — for mem­bers to have a voice of why they should be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect,” said Lopez, whose par­ents immi­grat­ed from Guatemala. 

“Our peo­ple can­not afford to live. There is a threat of indi­vid­u­als los­ing their work sta­tus, res­i­den­cy or not hav­ing access to path­ways to legal cit­i­zen­ship. There is a lot of eco­nom­ic insta­bil­i­ty for low-income, mixed-sta­tus com­mu­ni­ties,” she said. 

Lopez said mem­bers of her orga­ni­za­tion, which is 10 years old, were learn­ing as they were going in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Now they feel more pre­pared and have cre­at­ed more net­works. But Trump’s sec­ond term has dras­ti­cal­ly increased depor­ta­tions.  

“We’ve seen every­thing that he did in his first term times 10,” Lopez said.  

In 2025 alone, ICE removed more than 527,000 undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, accord­ing to an Octo­ber report from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. In stark con­trast, there were just over 61,000 removals of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants dur­ing the first year of Trump’s first term, accord­ing to an ICE report mea­sur­ing depor­ta­tions from Jan. 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2017.  

“There are more depor­ta­tions, there’s more fear, there’s more anti-immi­grant rhetoric,” Lopez said. “Every­thing is inten­si­fied.” 

Back­ing immi­grant jus­tice 

A Lati­no Pol­i­cy Sum­mit at the state Leg­isla­tive Office Build­ing in ear­ly Octo­ber gave mem­bers of local com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions a chance to be heard by state leg­is­la­tors. 

Dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion titled “Respond­ing to Fear with Jus­tice,” immi­gra­tion attor­ney Glenn Formi­ca told the audi­ence that it is impor­tant to chal­lenge every depor­ta­tion case.   

“I say we fight every sin­gle removal even if we lose,” Formi­ca said. By doing so, “we are forc­ing the sys­tem to respond,” he added.   

Formi­ca not­ed a Sep­tem­ber rul­ing by the U.S.  Supreme Court that allowed ICE offi­cers to con­tin­ue tac­tics such as stop­ping indi­vid­u­als with­out rea­son­able sus­pi­cion.   

In response, Formi­ca encour­aged cit­i­zens to be bold and will­ing to chal­lenge the sys­tem.  

“If you put enough wolves out there, they’re going to be afraid to be bit,” Formi­ca said. He sug­gest­ed cit­i­zens use their priv­i­lege to pro­voke and con­fuse ICE offi­cers. “If you’re a U.S. cit­i­zen, speak Span­ish, see what hap­pens,” he said.  

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong’s open­ing remarks at the sum­mit focused on pro­tect­ing immi­grant rights.  

Tong said immi­gra­tion is often cast as a Lati­no issue to mar­gin­al­ize and dehu­man­ize them. He shared how his own immi­grant par­ents worked sev­en days a week, 12 to 15 hours each day. 

 “Amer­i­ca runs on two things,” Tong quipped, “Dunkin’ and immi­grants.” 

The pow­er of protest 

As ICE agents detain undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, Avelo Air­lines facil­i­tat­ed oper­a­tions by con­duct­ing depor­ta­tion flights. Accord­ing to report­ing from CT Insid­er and Con­necti­cut Pub­lic, Avelo will no longer par­tic­i­pate in DHS’ char­ter pro­gram of depor­ta­tion flights start­ing on Jan. 27.

For months, a coali­tion of groups com­mit­ted to immi­grant rights from Con­necti­cut and Mass­a­chu­setts protest­ed Avelo’s involve­ment with ICE.  

On Nov. 1, 2025, the groups cel­e­brat­ed that Avelo will no longer be oper­at­ing out of Bradley Inter­na­tion­al Air­port start­ing in Jan­u­ary.

John Majer­cak, a vol­un­teer with Indi­vis­i­ble Northamp­ton — Swing Left West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts, waved to cars pass­ing by as he cel­e­brat­ed on the I‑75 Over­pass out­side the air­port. 

“Our posi­tion is that ICE is ille­gal, immoral and unnec­es­sar­i­ly cru­el. We don’t want to sup­port any busi­ness that sup­ports ICE,” Majer­cak said. 

Group leader and founder of Indi­vis­i­ble North Cen­tral Con­necti­cut Robin Hen­rie said the goal is to encour­age a boy­cott of the air­line. 

“It’s real­ly impor­tant for peo­ple to know not to fly Avelo Air­lines until they stop fly­ing depor­ta­tion flights for ICE and DHS,” Hen­rie said.  

Hen­rie’s group also planned to protest Avelo at Tweed New Haven Air­port. 

Avelo leav­ing Bradley “means we are hit­ting their pock­et­book, and com­pa­nies respond to the pock­et­book,” she said. “If more peo­ple refuse to fly Avelo here out of Tweed New Haven, they will fig­ure out they need to stop fly­ing those flights or they will go out of busi­ness.”

The groups have also inquired about the rela­tion­ship between Avelo Air­lines and UConn. 

Uni­ver­si­ty spokesper­son Stephanie Reitz said there is no direct rela­tion­ship between UConn and Avelo. 

“Learfield (UConn Sports Prop­er­ties) and Avelo are part­nered in a UConn Ath­let­ics spon­sor­ship agree­ment to pro­vide Avelo with asset place­ment, includ­ing sig­nage, pro­mo­tion con­tests, PA announce­ments, and air­line tick­et con­tests for UConn stu­dents at sev­er­al UConn sport­ing events such as men’s and wom­en’s bas­ket­ball, hock­ey, and base­ball,” Reitz said in an email. “The spon­sor­ship agree­ment with Avelo does not include any trav­el by UConn teams or per­son­nel; it is strict­ly a mar­ket­ing arrange­ment.”  

In Octo­ber, more than 7 mil­lion peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in “No Kings” events protest­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to the nation­al No Kings Alliance. Local­ly in Glas­ton­bury, more than 2,000 peo­ple joined the protest, accord­ing to Lisa Chan­dler from Take Action CT.

Julie Ingenohl, a Glas­ton­bury ther­a­pist, said she par­tic­i­pat­ed to gath­er with like-mind­ed peo­ple to “stand in num­ber to counter any sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion has.”  

She called the Trump administration’s immi­gra­tion enforce­ment actions “despi­ca­ble” and “racist.”  

“It feels like the begin­ning of geno­cide,” she said.  “This admin­is­tra­tion is becom­ing a monar­chy.”

Rev. Richard Allen, who said he was appalled at the treat­ment of immi­grants and refugees, held a “Melt ICE” sign dur­ing the protest. He said he helped set­tle numer­ous refugee fam­i­lies dur­ing his more than 30 years of ser­vice at the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church in South Glas­ton­bury.

“I per­son­al­ly wit­nessed the strength and pas­sion they bring,” he said. “I must find ways to resist. One of the ways is to come out­side with a sign that says, ‘Melt ICE.’”