By Anna Heqi­mi & Kar­la Perez
UConn Jour­nal­ism

Two high school stu­dents. Eigh­teen minors. Hun­dreds of arrests in near­ly 20 dif­fer­ent towns. Ramped up immi­gra­tion enforce­ment efforts have affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties across Con­necti­cut.  

In just the first six months of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond term, Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment made almost 400 arrests in Con­necti­cut, accord­ing to the Depor­ta­tion Data Project. While the admin­is­tra­tion claimed it would tar­get “the worst of the worst” immi­grants, ICE has instead cast a broad net in its appre­hen­sions. The arrests have instilled fear among many non-cit­i­zens in Con­necti­cut, regard­less of age, occu­pa­tion or legal sta­tus. 

“Stu­dents are ner­vous about going to col­lege. Par­ents are not send­ing their younger stu­dents to school. Folks are not going to school,” said Tabitha Sookdeo, exec­u­tive direc­tor for Con­necti­cut Stu­dents for a Dream.  

For­eign-born res­i­dents made up near­ly 16% of Connecticut’s total pop­u­la­tion in 2024, accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau. Near­ly 200,000 immi­grants in the state were undoc­u­ment­ed as of 2023, accord­ing to the Migra­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. 

Sev­er­al major ICE oper­a­tions have tak­en place in Con­necti­cut since Trump came back to office. Among them were at least two raids tar­get­ing employ­ees at car wash­es. The largest enforce­ment effort, Oper­a­tion Bro­ken Trust, occurred over four days in August 2025 through­out Dan­bury, Stam­ford and Nor­walk, result­ing in 65 arrests. This includ­ed 29 arrests of peo­ple that ICE said had been con­vict­ed or charged in the U.S. with crimes.  

In pro­mot­ing the operation’s suc­cess, ICE took aim at the Con­necti­cut Trust Act, the state law that restricts state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies from help­ing ICE enforce fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws.   

“Con­necti­cut is a sanc­tu­ary no more,” the agency declared in a press release.  

“Make no mis­take: Every per­son that we arrest­ed are crim­i­nals and break­ing fed­er­al law, but many of these indi­vid­u­als also vic­tim­ized inno­cent peo­ple and trau­ma­tized com­mu­ni­ties — rapists, drug traf­fick­ers, child sex preda­tors and mem­bers of vio­lent transna­tion­al crim­i­nal gangs,” said Patri­cia H. Hyde, the ICE Enforce­ment and Removal Oper­a­tions Boston act­ing Field Office Direc­tor. “They all made the mis­take of attempt­ing to sub­vert jus­tice by hid­ing out in Con­necti­cut.” 

Activists have dis­put­ed the agency’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of all those arrest­ed as hav­ing crim­i­nal records. In some cas­es, those who have been arrest­ed by ICE in Con­necti­cut were high school stu­dents. 

Dr. Made­line Negrón, super­in­ten­dent of New Haven Pub­lic Schools, said the com­mu­ni­ty joined togeth­er to bring home Esdrás Zabale­ta-Ramirez, a stu­dent at Wilbur Cross High School who was detained in July at a Southing­ton car wash where he worked. 

“There’s a strong coali­tion in this city by which we come togeth­er to pre­pare, because we knew this time could come,” said Negrón, who moved to the U.S. from Puer­to Rico when she was 10 years old, not know­ing a word of Eng­lish. Though she was a U.S. cit­i­zen, she said she remem­bered feel­ing like an out­sider — a sen­ti­ment she sees in immi­grant stu­dents today. 

 “The fear was always there; it has just inten­si­fied more,” she said. 

Due Process 

Immi­grants and advo­cates say the Trump administration’s detain­ment prac­tices have been notably more hos­tile and aggres­sive. Social media videos have shown indi­vid­u­als being shoved onto the ground and tased. Many of these inci­dents occurred in cour­t­hous­es when peo­ple showed up for immi­gra­tion hear­ings.  

Once detained, immi­grants say they have faced deplorable liv­ing con­di­tions such as over­crowd­ing and mal­nu­tri­tion. The Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Coun­cil said there have been 22 detainee deaths since Trump took office, while ICE has said only 15 deaths occurred in that time­frame.  

Sai­ful­lah Khan, who lives in New Haven, spent three weeks in ICE cus­tody after being detained dur­ing an immi­gra­tion sta­tus hear­ing at the Abra­ham A. Ribi­coff Fed­er­al Build­ing and U.S. Cour­t­house in Hart­ford. Khan, who immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from Afghanistan and enrolled at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty in 2012, was charged at by a group of masked ICE agents as he was leav­ing the cour­t­house. He said he ran because he was scared. Agents tack­led him to the ground and tased him. 

“The right side of my entire body, includ­ing my face, was just par­a­lyzed. I couldn’t feel. I didn’t have sen­sa­tion. I couldn’t move,” he recount­ed.  

Khan said he was dragged to a hold­ing cell under the cour­t­house. The offi­cers shack­led his hands and feet and refused to let him go to the bath­room, leav­ing him to sit in his own urine for hours, he said. Khan remained in that hold­ing cell for three days before being trans­ferred to Ply­mouth Coun­ty Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty in Mass­a­chu­setts, where he was held in max­i­mum secu­ri­ty.  

Con­necti­cut does not have an ICE deten­tion facil­i­ty; there­fore, most peo­ple detained by ICE are shipped to either the Ply­mouth Coun­ty facil­i­ty or Moshan­non Val­ley Pro­cess­ing Cen­ter in Penn­syl­va­nia. As of Dec. 10, 2025, there are more than 500 ICE detainees in the Ply­mouth facil­i­ty, accord­ing to the Ply­mouth Coun­ty Sherrif’s Depart­ment. ICE did not respond to inquiries about how many of those peo­ple were arrest­ed in Con­necti­cut. 

Accord­ing to Khan and his attor­ney, Alexan­der Taubes, Khan’s bond was post­ed imme­di­ate­ly, but ICE dis­re­gard­ed it, instead ship­ping him off to the Penn­syl­va­nia facil­i­ty. Khan said he was denied food and giv­en only one bot­tle of water dur­ing the 18-hour jour­ney in the sum­mer heat. 

Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Pro­fes­sor Charles Vena­tor-San­ti­a­go, who teach­es a course titled “Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion­al Dic­ta­tor­ship,” called ICE agents’ immi­gra­tion enforce­ment, “movie-style raids” as they grab peo­ple while wear­ing masks and in unmarked vehi­cles. “This is more of a show of force, to scare peo­ple,” he said. 

Dan Bar­rett, legal direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Con­necti­cut, said he believes that there have been vio­la­tions of the Fifth Amend­ment in immi­gra­tion cas­es. The Fifth Amend­ment states that no per­son shall “be deprived of life, lib­er­ty, or prop­er­ty, with­out due process of law.”  

In many cas­es, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is deport­ing immi­grants with­out going through immi­gra­tion courts, Bar­rett said.  

“To eject the num­ber of peo­ple that it’s decid­ed capri­cious­ly to eject from the coun­try, it must act uni­lat­er­al­ly, which is the def­i­n­i­tion of an absence of due process,” Bar­rett said.  

Bar­rett said the Supreme Court estab­lished in a 1976 case that due process requires “mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to be heard.” Every per­son, regard­less of immi­gra­tion sta­tus, is enti­tled to due process, Bar­rett said. 

“If you are phys­i­cal­ly present, you are sub­ject to Amer­i­can law. One Amer­i­can law is the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion … That’s true both fed­er­al­ly and on the state lev­el,” he said. “If you’re phys­i­cal­ly present here, then you have the pro­tec­tions, for exam­ple, of the due process clause.” 

Jon Bauer, a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor at UConn School of Law, oper­ates the university’s Asy­lum and Human Rights Clin­ic that rep­re­sents clients apply­ing for asy­lum in the U.S. His clients have fled from their home coun­tries to escape vio­lence due to their gen­der or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, reli­gious or polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion or some oth­er dan­ger. 

Bauer said that one of the ways the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has under­mined due process has been by rein­ter­pret­ing the law to deny peo­ple the right to a hear­ing and to keep nonci­t­i­zens in pro­longed deten­tion. He said that the admin­is­tra­tion has decid­ed that any­one who entered the coun­try with­out a visa is no longer enti­tled to a bond hear­ing, for exam­ple. 

“That’s anoth­er area where in just about every case where a court has reviewed this new pol­i­cy, the courts have found that it’s legal­ly unfound­ed, and in fact, peo­ple are enti­tled to a bond hear­ing,” he said.  

Bauer said the admin­is­tra­tion is also attempt­ing to exploit exec­u­tive orders in anoth­er part of the immi­gra­tion debate: the quest to change who qual­i­fies for birthright cit­i­zen­ship.  

Birthright Citizenship

One of the eight exec­u­tive orders regard­ing immi­gra­tion that Trump signed on his first day back in the White House tar­get­ed birthright cit­i­zen­ship. This order aimed to deny cit­i­zen­ship to chil­dren born on U.S. soil if nei­ther their par­ents had legal per­ma­nent sta­tus when the child was born.  

Bauer said this order direct­ly con­tra­dicts how the Supreme Court has inter­pret­ed birthright cit­i­zen­ship for more than a cen­tu­ry. 

“The Four­teenth Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, which has been in effect since 1868, says ‘all per­sons born or nat­u­ral­ized in the Unit­ed States and sub­ject to the juris­dic­tion there­of, are cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States and of the state where­in they reside.’ So, on the face of things, it could not be clear­er that peo­ple born in the Unit­ed States are cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States,” he said.  

The com­mon law doc­trine of birthright cit­i­zen­ship was estab­lished even ear­li­er, dur­ing the found­ing of the U.S. as the nation seced­ed from Eng­land, Bauer said. He explained the log­ic that peo­ple are sub­ject to the juris­dic­tion of the land they are present in. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s view that chil­dren born to nonci­t­i­zens who lack per­ma­nent sta­tus is non­sen­si­cal, he explained. Any­one born in the U.S. is oblig­ed to fol­low U.S. laws and can be pros­e­cut­ed for any crimes they com­mit — so they are clear­ly sub­ject to the U.S.‘s juris­dic­tion, he said.

“This order just rad­i­cal­ly changed what the courts have rou­tine­ly held to be the mean­ing of the Four­teenth Amend­ment,” Bauer said.  

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong said that the order, if enforced, would raise a slew of ques­tions includ­ing whether chil­dren born in the U.S. to immi­grant par­ents become state­less. 

Tong’s par­ents immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from Chi­na and Tai­wan in the 1960s. He was grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship because he was born in the U.S. He grew up work­ing in his family’s restau­rant in Wethers­field, Conn. along­side immi­grants and saw their strong work eth­ic first-hand. 

“I am extra­or­di­nar­i­ly grate­ful to be an Amer­i­can and to have been born in this coun­try and Amer­i­can by oper­a­tion of the Four­teenth Amend­ment,” Tong said. 

When Trump signed the exec­u­tive order on his first day back in office, fed­er­al judges from sev­er­al states issued injunc­tions that tem­porar­i­ly blocked it from being imple­ment­ed. In March, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion asked the Supreme Court to pro­hib­it low­er courts from doing this. In a 6–3 vote, the court reject­ed the injunc­tions. In ear­ly Octo­ber, though, the First Cir­cuit Court of Appeals upheld the Boston dis­trict court’s injunc­tion and declared Trump’s attempt to end birthright cit­i­zen­ship uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.  

On Dec. 5, the Supreme Court said it will hear argu­ments on birthright cit­i­zen­ship in the spring, with a rul­ing expect­ed by ear­ly sum­mer.  

Expanding ICE 

The fed­er­al bud­get bill signed in July allo­cates over $170 bil­lion to ICE-relat­ed costs over a four-year peri­od to achieve the administration’s goal of deport­ing one mil­lion immi­grants year­ly, tripling ICE’s annu­al bud­get and mak­ing it the high­est-fund­ed fed­er­al law enforce­ment agency. 

Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Coun­cil, $45 bil­lion is intend­ed for build­ing new immi­gra­tion deten­tion cen­ters such as “Alli­ga­tor Alca­traz,” which began oper­a­tions in Flori­da in July. Anoth­er $46.6 bil­lion was ded­i­cat­ed to con­struct­ing the wall at the U.S.-Mexico bor­der.  

Con­gress had already appro­pri­at­ed $10 bil­lion for fis­cal year 2025. With these new allo­ca­tions, ICE enforce­ment received anoth­er $18.7 bil­lion, accord­ing to the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice.  

The fed­er­al bud­get bill also changed ben­e­fits avail­able to non-cit­i­zens through fed­er­al food assis­tance and heath care pro­grams. 

“Indi­vid­u­als such as refugees, asylees, traf­fick­ing vic­tims, human­i­tar­i­an parolees and more who cur­rent­ly qual­i­fy for SNAP will no longer be eli­gi­ble due to their immi­gra­tion sta­tus,” the Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Social Ser­vices stat­ed in July on its web­site. The afore­men­tioned groups will also no longer be eli­gi­ble for HUSKY Health, the state’s Med­ic­aid pro­gram, as of Oct. 1, 2026, accord­ing to the web­site. 

Connecticut Trust Act 

Con­necti­cut state law restricts local and state law enforce­ment from coop­er­at­ing with ICE agents, lead­ing Trump to brand Con­necti­cut as a “sanc­tu­ary” state and threat­en­ing to pun­ish munic­i­pal­i­ties with a loss of fed­er­al fund­ing if they don’t assist ICE offi­cers. 

The Con­necti­cut Trust Act was enact­ed in 2013 to estab­lish guid­ance about when state and local law enforce­ment would acknowl­edge requests from ICE. The act pro­hibits law enforce­ment from arrest­ing or detain­ing an indi­vid­ual unless that per­son has been con­vict­ed of a seri­ous felony or is on a ter­ror­ist watch list.

“The Trust Act main­tains Con­necti­cut’s sov­er­eign­ty by pre­vent­ing dep­u­ti­za­tion of local and state law enforce­ment for immi­gra­tion enforce­ment,” Con­necti­cut Spe­cial Coun­sel for Civ­il Rights Janelle Medeiros wrote in a Jan­u­ary 2025 mem­o­ran­dum. 

Immi­gra­tion attor­ney Edwin Colon said that the leg­is­la­ture requires police depart­ments and oth­er state and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions to com­ply with the statute. How­ev­er, some exemp­tions apply, such as when police deal with ter­ror­ists. While Trump por­trays such laws as attempts to pro­tect ille­gal immi­grants, Colon said the laws are impor­tant to pro­tect the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty.

“You want your neigh­bors, regard­less of sta­tus, to be able to feel com­fort­able and safe in report­ing crim­i­nal acts that hap­pen in your com­mu­ni­ty,” Colon said. “You want that neigh­bor who suf­fered an assault to be able to report to a police depart­ment that the assault occurred, so it does­n’t hap­pen to their neigh­bor next door.” 

Con­necti­cut police depart­ments con­tact­ed for this arti­cle con­firmed their com­pli­ance with the Trust Act.

“When Troop­ers inter­act with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, they do not have knowl­edge of an individual’s immi­gra­tion sta­tus,” an email from the Con­necti­cut State Police’s media rela­tions unit stat­ed. “As such, their inter­ac­tions remain fair and unbi­ased.” 

UConn Police Depart­ment Capt. Matthew Zadrows­ki said in an email that their work “is in line with the Trust Act.” 

More than 90 groups in Con­necti­cut com­mit­ted to immi­grant rights sent a let­ter to state law­mak­ers in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber call­ing for action to strength­en the Con­necti­cut Trust Act. The calls to action includ­ed pro­hibit­ing ICE arrests at cour­t­hous­es, includ­ing trav­el to and from them, and pro­hibit­ing any and all indi­rect police assis­tance to ICE. 

In ear­ly Novem­ber, Con­necti­cut law­mak­ers passed and Gov. Ned Lam­ont signed House Bill 8004,  which pro­hibits most civ­il immi­gra­tion arrests in state cour­t­hous­es. Addi­tion­al­ly, the law restricts Con­necti­cut from shar­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion with fed­er­al author­i­ties, such as any infor­ma­tion that reveals an indi­vid­u­al’s loca­tion, includ­ing house, school and work address­es – except when required by state or fed­er­al law.  

The new law also pro­hibits law enforce­ment offi­cers – includ­ing ICE agents – from wear­ing masks while car­ry­ing out their duties if they don’t have a med­ical exemp­tion.  

U.S. Rep. John Lar­son, a Demo­c­rat rep­re­sent­ing Connecticut’s First Dis­trict, intro­duced a bill in Con­gress called the “No Secret Police Act,” which would pro­hib­it ICE agents from wear­ing masks while per­form­ing enforce­ment duties. Accord­ing to Home­land Secu­ri­ty, ICE offi­cers wear masks to pre­vent dox­ing.  

“All ICE law enforce­ment offi­cers car­ry badges and cre­den­tials and will iden­ti­fy them­selves when required for pub­lic safe­ty or legal neces­si­ty,” accord­ing to ICE.

Lar­son said that ICE agents wear­ing masks give polic­ing a bad name.  

“What police force do you know that wears black masks and comes up and ter­ror­izes peo­ple, and strikes fear?” Lar­son said in an inter­view. “This is not the Amer­i­ca that it should be, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t con­sti­tu­tion­al either.” 

The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty blast­ed Lar­son for his com­ments call­ing ICE agents “the SS” and “the Gestapo” for arrest­ing ille­gal immi­grants. 

In a mid-Sep­tem­ber press release, the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty said that there is a 1000% increase in ICE offi­cer assaults that it blamed on “hate­ful rhetoric.” It named Lar­son, oth­er democ­rats and left-lean­ing orga­ni­za­tions in the press release.  

“This demo­niza­tion is inspir­ing vio­lence across the coun­try,” Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Pub­lic Affairs Tri­cia McLaugh­lin said in the release. 

Lar­son said he is unde­terred.  

“Any time you’re being sin­gled out by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, giv­en his per­for­mance and what he has done, and the bru­tal nature of what tran­spired in my dis­trict, I wear it as a badge of hon­or,” he said. “I think it’s impor­tant that peo­ple speak out when we see wrong.” 

Immi­gra­tion attor­ney Dana Bucin said she believes the U.S. immi­gra­tion sys­tem has been bro­ken for many years, enabling Trump’s mas­sive depor­ta­tion plan. 

“The first guilt that I assign is to us, the Amer­i­can peo­ple. There would be no Trump abus­es if it weren’t for the Amer­i­can peo­ple hav­ing failed their duty to cre­ate a fair and equi­table immi­gra­tion leg­isla­tive frame­work,” she said. “We already deliv­ered to this admin­is­tra­tion a bro­ken set of laws that the admin­is­tra­tion can just abuse and inflict on immi­grants.”