At Connecticut’s No Kings rallies over the weekend, one of the most consistent messages from protesters was against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Detentions have ramped up in Connecticut and across the nation after the first No Kings protest in June. Days before the Saturday rallies, ICE agents detained eight people at a raid in Hamden.
Ahead of the nationwide protest, Connecticut Public’s Rachel Iacovone spoke to State Rep. Vincent Candelora. The Republican Minority Leader says he’s mostly focused on getting both sides to sit down at the same table on this issue.
RI: I know that members of your party have said, you know, ‘ICE is following the rules. This is what they should be doing.’ But some of the concerns have mounted after ProPublica published an article that showed 170 U.S. citizens have been detained. I don't know if you have any comment on that.
VC: Our country is in a very precarious situation when it comes to, you know, security and border control, so no question. You know, ICE is doing very sweeping actions in order to bring security back to our country, and in that process, I think innocent people will be caught up. My concern would be that if somebody is mistakenly detained by ICE that that would be resolved quickly. But I think to not recognize where we are as a country with the influx of people that came in undocumented and the security risks associated with that is a mistake.
So when I see in the state of Connecticut, our judicial branch, refusing to allow ICE into courtrooms, requiring them to be de-masked, causing potential safety risks, to me that's not the way we should be going about it.
We certainly should be all working together to try to make sure that, you know, criminal aliens are removed from our streets. And I am sympathetic with ICE having to do their job and to protect themselves. At the same time, I'm sympathetic to people who are wrongfully detained.
RI: What would you say to your constituents, many of whom might be, you know, Latino in particular, and worried right now about being profiled?
VC: I mean, I think people need to be carrying their ID so that they could prove their identity quickly. I am certainly concerned about that profiling. The only way to certainly combat it is to have the ability to prove that you are a U.S. citizen. If we start hearing about more unjust activity, you know, I would love to hear about it and see how we could work to curb it and, you know, try to come together and communicate with each other.
What I watch from both sides is they've taken extremes. You have individuals that want everyone deported, and then you have individuals that want no one deported, and I think we need to find some common ground and have a conversation. If, in fact, they don't want anyone deported, well then, I think we're never going to be able to bridge that gap.
RI: What do you recommend? You know, if this is maybe a little too extreme for what you would like to see, what is the solution?
VC: You know, being in a blue state, I'm continually left to react to policies that get passed that, to me, aren't necessarily good public policies, but they're a good press release. And so what I continue to try to do behind the scenes is working with our law enforcement to bring clarity. So right now, I'm trying to bring information to our local authorities so that they could get clarity on when and how they could communicate with ICE because, you know, in the end, we want to avoid wrongful detentions, and we are not set up that way right now.
We have created a policy in the state of Connecticut where our local law enforcement, our judicial branch, are prohibited by law to communicate with ICE. And to me, that's just a mistake, because we may see more mistakes occurring in the future, and we could continue to point to them and say how tragic they are, but we're not doing anything to prevent it from happening.
And frankly, I think there are areas where Gov. Lamont has done a good job of trying to do that when it comes to, especially, energy policy for our state and the direction of the federal government has gone in. Gov. Lamont, if you ever watch his comments, and even our speaker, Ritter, they're sort of guarded in what they say. They don't personally attack the president, they don't name-call. They obviously are critical of certain policies that have been implemented, but I think, as Lamont has said, where he could find common ground, he's going to try to find common ground.
I just think we somehow have to figure out how to depoliticize the immigration issue, because it is so hotly contested on both sides, recognize that there are human lives involved and try to bring the conversation into a different sphere.
