Woman detained by ICE in CT city, two young children allegedly left terrified in car
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker confirmed Wednesday that the New Haven Police Department was told that a woman from the Hill neighborhood of the city was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Elicker said they are trying to confirm that the woman was with her two children, ages 13 and 8, when the arrest by ICE occurred.
'If that is true…that is deplorable and inhumane,' Elicker said.
Elicker said he has two children about those ages, who would 'lose their minds' if they saw their mother arrested in such a way. It would be 'beyond the pale,' he said.
He said he was told she was getting the kids ready to go to school when the arrest occurred.
Further, Elicker said, ICE did not inform the city or the Police Department that the arrest would take place, which 'creates a danger' for her, police and ICE, because the arrest could be seen as an abduction by those who did not know what was occurring.
'It puts our officers and ICE at risk,' he said.
Elicker, who did not name the woman, said she had been charged in March with third-degree assault following a conflict in which she and another person suffered minor injuries. He said the case remains pending.
John Lugo, an organizer with New Haven-based Unidad Latina en Accion, said the woman was taken around 8:15 a.m. on Monday morning with her two children in her car.
'The woman was taken and detained and her two traumatized children remained in the car,' Lugo said.
Lugo said one of the children is autistic and keeps asking for his mother.
'He wants his mom but there is no mom. Mom is sitting in jail,' Lugo said.
Lugo said both children are staying with a grandmother in the state. The grandmother is visiting from Mexico but the length of her stay in the U.S. is unclear, so Lugo and his organization are worried about the future of the children once she goes back to Mexico.
CT high school's joy in graduation dimmed by classmate taken by ICE. Town hopes to get him back.
Lugo said the best way the public can help is money for legal representation. He said the detained woman does not have a lawyer at this time and that all other state detainees end up in Texas. He's waiting to see if she ends up transferred to Texas, which he said would only add to the financial burden.
'That's one way to punish migrants when you have to transfer someone so far away. Being in Texas adds an additional cost. Now they need a lawyer to travel there because sometimes they aren't allowed to have video conferences,' Lugo said.
Lugo said since last week there have been more people being detained without any history of felonies.
'The perfect example was the Southington car wash incident,' Lugo said. 'They were just profiled. They drove by and saw a bunch of migrants and decided to stop and detained them. That happened the same day as what happened to the women in New Haven.'
'In Southington, they just detained four people because they looked like migrants. They weren't looking for a particular person. I think it's very troubling and the hard part is seeing the kids crying and being traumatized,' he added. 'Due process is not there anymore.'
The reason for the Southington arrest has not been confirmed by authorities.
Lugo said since the start of President Donald Trump's second term, people in his community are scared.
'They are trying to figure out what to do. Many are thinking about going back to their country because this is not a safe place anymore,' Lugo said. 'It's not just the government. We see other kids at school threatening to call ICE on classmates and parents. We see landlords taking advantage. They are raising the rent and are getting them evicted. The first threat by many is: if you don't move, 'I will call ICE.''
'I have two cases in which New Haven restaurant bosses that have told workers if you don't stop complaining about wages or raises, I'm going to call immigration on you guys. It's not just the government. This is empowering people to hate people and hate us.'
Lugo said he fears that ICE is expanding and that he knows of an office that has opened in New Haven.
'We think eventually they are going to hit us hard in Connecticut just because they want to punish the state because the state has taken a stance on behalf of the migrant community,' Lugo said.
The Southington and New Haven detainments by ICE are all on the heels of a Meriden high school student and his father being detained last week.
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