Amid President-elect Donald Trump’s ongoing talks about mass deportation plans, Connecticut officials are looking to reassure residents that legislative safeguards are in place to protect undocumented people in the state.
One such law is the Trust Act. The law came about after some neighborhoods in Connecticut faced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that left a significant impact on those communities.
Connecticut’s history with ICE raids
In September 2006, Danbury police officers, with the assistance of ICE agents, arrested 11 Latino residents during an undercover sting operation. The day laborers got into a vehicle with a man who they believed hired them for demolition work. The man was an undercover Danbury police officer who drove them to the supposed worksite where local police made the arrests.
Nine of the laborers filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Danbury and ICE, saying their constitutional rights were violated. The lawsuit ended with a $650,000 settlement — $400,000 from the city and $250,000 from the federal government — with the day laborers, who became known as the “Danbury 11.”
Less than a year after the Danbury raid, ICE agents arrested 29 people in New Haven in June 2007 — many without warrants. The arrests were made in a predominantly Latino neighborhood within Fair Haven. Eleven men who were arrested later filed a lawsuit against ICE officials, alleging the arrests were made based on their physical appearance.
The civil rights case resulted in a landmark settlement in which the federal government paid $350,000. The federal government also offered a choice of immigration relief or termination of deportation proceedings as part of the settlement.
These high-profile raids, and other similar raids, led to the creation of the Trust Act in Connecticut.
What is the Trust Act?
The Trust Act was initially passed in 2013. It put limits on the information that state and local law enforcement can share with ICE, restricting how Connecticut police can cooperate with federal immigration officers.
Like a checks and balances system, the Trust Act gave “oversight on specific bureaucracies or law enforcement agencies [in Connecticut] to limit their information sharing with ICE,” said Kris Klein Hernández, an assistant professor of history at Connecticut College.
The goal was to treat people who were undocumented more humanely and to make sure that ICE could not come into Connecticut and obtain information to identify and deport undocumented people, according to Hernández.
In 2019, Connecticut lawmakers realized there were loopholes in the law that allowed ICE to still obtain certain information from local law enforcement.
State Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat, introduced a bill with Democratic State Sen. Gary Winfield with changes that addressed those loopholes.
The revisions made it so state and local law enforcement only need to share information with federal immigration agents if an undocumented person is a convicted felon or a potential terrorist.
The intent was to keep Connecticut law enforcement focused on local crimes, so resources were not diverted to federal immigration agents unnecessarily and undocumented people could feel safe when communicating with police, Stafstrom said.
Trust Act amid Trump’s return to office
As Trump prepares to take office in January, various advocates have raised concerns about deportations in immigrant communities. More than 110,000 undocumented immigrants live in Connecticut.
Stafstrom said he has not heard of concerns specific to the Trust Act or the law needing any additional changes.
Trump will have more trouble carrying out mass deportations in Connecticut than in states like Texas because of laws like the Trust Act, Hernández said.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is confident in the effectiveness of the Trust Act. He spoke at a recent press conference featuring Connecticut officials sharing support for the immigrant community.
“The federal government can’t come into Connecticut and commandeer state resources, state law enforcement, to do their job for them, and they can’t tell us to do their job for them. That’s what [the Trust Act] says,” Tong said.
