By Anna Heqi­mi & Kar­la Perez
UConn Jour­nal­ism

Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dents from immi­grant fam­i­lies are post­pon­ing trav­el, check­ing in reg­u­lar­ly with par­ents and loved ones and wor­ry­ing about their futures as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion pur­sues an aggres­sive depor­ta­tion agen­da with the goal of deport­ing 1 mil­lion immi­grants annu­al­ly.

 Stu­dents say that aggres­sive roundups around the coun­try are caus­ing fear and anx­i­ety for them­selves and their fam­i­lies.  

Emer­son Zece­na, cofounder of the UConn Chap­ter of Con­necti­cut Stu­dents for a Dream, said he wor­ries con­stant­ly about his moth­er, a Guatemalan immi­grant. 

“It’s sad to even have to think about your mom not answer­ing and imme­di­ate­ly have to think she was detained, she has been pulled over, and now she’s being processed and sent back to her home coun­try,” Zece­na said. “I’m always tex­ting her and I real­ly do feel some sort of pan­ic when she is not respond­ing to me by the minute.”  

Zece­na helped orga­nize a “Know-your-Rights” pre­sen­ta­tion on cam­pus in late Octo­ber — one of sev­er­al events on cam­pus designed to offer sup­port and infor­ma­tion about immi­gra­tion enforce­ment.  

The pre­sen­ta­tion was led by two attor­neys who explained the Lak­en Riley Act, signed into law in late Jan­u­ary 2025, that makes it more dif­fi­cult for detained indi­vid­u­als to receive bond. The law requires that any undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant who is charged with or admits hav­ing com­mit­ted bur­glary, shoplift­ing, assault of a law enforce­ment offi­cer or any seri­ous felonies be detained.

That means if some­one gets arrest­ed for shoplift­ing and ICE detains the indi­vid­ual, they can’t request bond from a judge even if the shoplift­ing charge gets dis­missed the next day, attor­ney Ben­jamin Halde­man said.  

Nate Fox, an attor­ney with the Immi­grant Children’s Jus­tice Project, offered per­son­al­ized assis­tance with stu­dents’ legal ques­tions after the pre­sen­ta­tion.

Anoth­er event in Novem­ber served to edu­cate stu­dents on their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. The “Migrant Teach-In” includ­ed a talk by Sis­ter Mary Jude Lazarus, a nun and direc­tor of the Office for His­pan­ic Min­istry of the Dio­cese of Nor­wich.  

Lazarus told the sto­ry of an undoc­u­ment­ed Guatemalan man liv­ing in Willi­man­tic who was detained by ICE for five months after con­firm­ing to offi­cers that the per­son they were look­ing for was his cousin. Lazarus said the man had a right to remain silent but spoke out of fear. He decid­ed to self-deport along with his wife and their child, who is a U.S. cit­i­zen. 

“It’s dev­as­tat­ing,” Lazarus said.  

UndocuHuskies, a group that rep­re­sents undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dents at UConn, has asked the uni­ver­si­ty about safe spaces on cam­pus. 

On the first day of Trump’s sec­ond term, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty rescind­ed the Biden-era “sen­si­tive loca­tion” pro­to­cols that restrict­ed immi­gra­tion enforce­ment in cer­tain areas such as church­es, hos­pi­tals and uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. 

At UConn, cam­pus admin­is­tra­tion stat­ed in a let­ter on Jan. 28, 2025, that uni­ver­si­ty police would not ques­tion stu­dents about immi­gra­tion sta­tus and would not detain them sole­ly on the belief that they are undoc­u­ment­ed. The let­ter also stat­ed that, under the fed­er­al Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al Rights and Pri­va­cy Act, the uni­ver­si­ty is pro­hib­it­ed from shar­ing infor­ma­tion about any student’s class sched­ule or class­room loca­tion.  

ICE is not allowed to enter pri­vate spaces on cam­pus unless they have a judi­cial war­rant, accord­ing to an arti­cle in UConn Today. Pri­vate spaces include “res­i­dence halls, fac­ul­ty and staff offices, clin­i­cal care spaces, and oth­er spaces that are locked when not in use or can only be accessed using a key card.” 

Aleena Chaudry, co-pres­i­dent of UndocuHuskies, said the group is cau­tious about how it pro­motes its events.  

“We don’t know who has any harm­ful inten­tions,” she said. “It’s a bit more trick­i­er now that things have real­ly kicked off with depor­ta­tions. We have to nav­i­gate those chal­lenges when we actu­al­ly have phys­i­cal meet­ings to be able to make sure that they are in spaces that are untouch­able to ICE agents.” 

UConn Dean of Stu­dents Fany DeJesús Han­non said her office is com­mit­ted to find­ing ways to sup­port stu­dents and has con­duct­ed “Know-your-Rights” work­shops on immi­gra­tion since 2012. 

But as fears have grown on cam­pus, Han­non said steps had to be tak­en to pro­tect mem­bers of the university’s Undoc­u­ment­ed Stu­dent Advi­so­ry Board Com­mit­tee. Com­mit­tee mem­bers, both pro­fes­sors and stu­dents, expressed con­cerns about their names being pub­lic, so the uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed a pass­word-pro­tect­ed por­tal.  

“We took those mea­sure­ments to keep folks — I don’t want to use ‘pro­tect­ed’ because I think it’s very hard these days to even say that we’re going to keep you safe — but at least give them some peace of mind,” Han­non said. 

Emer­son Zece­na, UConn chap­ter of Con­necti­cut Stu­dents for a Dream cofounder

Emer­son Zece­na tries to call his mom every hour to ensure she is all right. He con­stant­ly texts her and when she does not imme­di­ate­ly respond, he instant­ly fears the worst: depor­ta­tion. 

Zecena’s moth­er is an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Guatemala. 

Pri­or to Trump’s return to office, Zece­na, a sopho­more polit­i­cal sci­ence major, said he would not wor­ry about his moth­er get­ting deport­ed. Now, as ICE detain­ments are hap­pen­ing in Con­necti­cut, he said he is con­stant­ly fright­ened and anx­ious.  

“See­ing all the inhu­mane actions …  I have to be call­ing her con­sis­tent­ly, check­ing up on her, hav­ing that extra bur­den and fear that if my mom doesn’t answer the phone, my mind imme­di­ate­ly jumps to the worst,” Zece­na said. “It’s such a hor­ri­ble thing to have, and I know it’s a shared expe­ri­ence.” 

Zece­na said the ramped up immi­gra­tion enforce­ment led him to start the UConn chap­ter of Con­necti­cut Stu­dents for a Dream in Sep­tem­ber 2025. He got involved with the orga­ni­za­tion in high school after he had con­cerns about immi­grant access to health care.

He said he wants to “be a voice to the voice­less and speak out against these injus­tices when no one else choos­es to.” 

Nurs­ing Stu­dent Giselle 

Giselle, a sopho­more nurs­ing major, said she wor­ries con­stant­ly about her undoc­u­ment­ed par­ents get­ting deport­ed. Her moth­er is from Peru, and her father is from Ecuador. Fear of ICE has kept her father from attend­ing court to legal­ly stay longer in the U.S., she said.  

Giselle, who asked to be iden­ti­fied by her mid­dle name to pro­tect her fam­i­ly, said both par­ents now spend most of their time hid­ing at home. “They’re scared to go shop­ping, pick up my broth­er — they’re scared to do any­thing,” she said.

Her father is afraid to go out to cer­tain places, so their fam­i­ly friend some­times goes shop­ping for him. If the fam­i­ly does go out, Giselle said it’s sim­ply to go through the Dairy Queen dri­ve-thru and then imme­di­ate­ly back home. 

“It just takes one out­ing and you can get caught,” she explained.  

Giselle keeps track of pol­i­cy changes from the admin­is­tra­tion and shares new infor­ma­tion she learns with her par­ents in hopes of keep­ing them safe. She recent­ly gave mem­bers of her fam­i­ly red cards that list an individual’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing ICE encoun­ters. 

If they get deport­ed, she wor­ries that she will have to drop out of school and take care of her younger broth­er. Giselle is on a full schol­ar­ship, so it would be a painful and dif­fi­cult choice to leave school, she said, but “fam­i­ly comes first.” 

Ryan, co-pres­i­dent of UndocuHuskies  

Ryan, an undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dent from Brazil who is a senior at UConn, said he isn’t wor­ried about being deport­ed him­self but is con­cerned about his father.  

In the two decades his father has been in the U.S., he has worked mul­ti­ple jobs — plumber, car­pen­ter, con­struc­tion work­er and accoun­tant.  

Ryan said his father is a hard work­er and, like many immi­grants, has paid tax­es and con­tributed to the econ­o­my. 

“He cares about work­ing and doing what’s right,” said Ryan, who asked that his last name not be used to pro­tect his par­ents. “I wouldn’t want all his work to be thrown away.” 

Sophie, Ukrain­ian Refugee 

Sophie, a UConn stu­dent who came to the U.S. from Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, said she feels stuck here, afraid that if she leaves to vis­it fam­i­ly she won’t be able to return. 

Sophie, who requests for her last name to not be revealed due to uncer­tain­ty with her immi­gra­tion sta­tus, moved to Con­necti­cut alone at 14 years old after high schools in Ukraine began to close after Russia’s inva­sion. 

Her par­ents asked her how she envi­sioned her future. If she could­n’t fin­ish high school, she could­n’t go to col­lege either. So, Sophie applied to con­tin­ue her edu­ca­tion abroad. Saint Bernard High School in Uncasville offered to cov­er the cost of her tuition and con­nect­ed her to a host fam­i­ly. 

At first, she would cry almost every night, con­stant­ly wor­ried about her family’s safe­ty. Although she is still wor­ried, she said she is grate­ful to her host fam­i­ly for giv­ing her shel­ter, com­fort and above all, a sense of belong­ing. 

Now in her first year at UConn, she is study­ing com­put­er sci­ence and engi­neer­ing.

Sophie booked a flight for June 1, 2025, excit­ed to see her moth­er and broth­er in Ger­many. Just three days before her depar­ture, she received an email from the UConn Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Stu­dents & Schol­ars warn­ing that the sus­pen­sion of visa pro­cess­ing could mean that inter­na­tion­al stu­dents may not be able to return to the U.S. if they left. 

Her host mom was scared that her trip would be con­sid­ered “self-depor­ta­tion.”  

“I would be home for sum­mer, but I was forced to stay here,” Sophie said. “If I do choose to go home, I have to be pre­pared to not come back. I’m not sure I want to be able to stay if I have to go through all this trou­ble. I can’t real­ly stay here for such a long peri­od of time with­out know­ing I will be able to see them.”  

Jour­nal­ism stu­dent JJ Ryu 

JJ Ryu, a jour­nal­ism major and the daugh­ter of South Kore­an immi­grants, said she self-cen­sors, choos­ing not to cov­er immi­gra­tion sto­ries for fear that her work could affect her par­ents. 

Ryu shared an instance where she wrote an arti­cle on the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s attempt to shut down the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. Afraid that her sto­ry could have brought harm to her fam­i­ly, she refused to have it pub­lished. “I have to make sure that I’m tak­ing as many pre­cau­tions that I can,” she said. 

As a jour­nal­ist, she said she believes the pub­lic deserves to know what’s going on. Because she keeps up with the news, Ryu is the infor­ma­tion hold­er for her friends and fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, Ryu said her undoc­u­ment­ed friends are hes­i­tant to dis­cuss their con­cerns with her. She said she under­stands because if she were in their shoes, she would stay silent too. 

“I would­n’t trust any­body,” Ryu said. “Your friends can turn their back on you at any moment. The gov­ern­ment can turn [its] back on you any moment. Nobody’s a guar­an­tee.”  

Vic­to­ria Sil­va-Soto 

Vic­to­ria Sil­va-Soto, a junior at UConn, said she won­ders why the peo­ple that helped raise her are being treat­ed like crim­i­nals.  

 When her moth­er immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from Brazil in 1999, sev­er­al friends came with her. In Brazil­ian cul­ture, it is com­mon to refer to close fam­i­ly friends as “aunts,” “uncles” and “cousins” despite no blood rela­tion. Her mom was one of the lucky ones, obtain­ing her cit­i­zen­ship in 2021, while two “aunts” that accom­pa­nied her on the jour­ney from Brazil remain undoc­u­ment­ed. 

Grow­ing up, Sil­va-Soto joined her mom’s long shifts clean­ing hous­es and deliv­er­ing stacks of Jour­nal Inquir­er news­pa­pers. After one of her aunts began her own clean­ing busi­ness, Sil­va-Soto worked for her as her first job.  

Silva-Soto’s mem­o­ries are filled with attend­ing birth­day par­ties, going to church and host­ing large fam­i­ly get-togeth­ers with these aunts.  

In August, both aunts received let­ters from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment encour­ag­ing self-depor­ta­tion. One of the women had her stay legal­ly extend­ed to Novem­ber 2026 but wor­ries she won’t be able to attain cit­i­zen­ship or would be forced to leave with her chil­dren, who are U.S. cit­i­zens, Sil­va-Soto said. The oth­er aunt, who does not have chil­dren, is in hid­ing — fear­ful to approach her front door and risk being seen.  

“There was a lot of cry­ing,” Sil­va-Soto said, not­ing that nei­ther woman has been back to Brazil in 25 years. “You don’t think it’s going to hap­pen to you, and then you get the let­ter.”