Lamont willing to send National Guard to border

Gov. Ned Lamont said during a national news broadcast that immigration from Mexico is “hitting us,” but while there has been an increase in immigration in Connecticut, officials said very few of those families arrive from the southern border.

“It’s hitting us. I see what it’s doing to the country,” Lamont told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin last week. “They’ve got to secure the border. I tell President Biden, we’ll send the Connecticut Guard down to help you if that’s what you need to get it done.”

But Jen Vickery, spokesperson for immigration services agency New Haven’s Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, said few immigrants who cross the southern border of the United States make their way to Connecticut.

“Connecticut has seen a very significant increase in newcomers of all types, but very few of our clients — historically and today — come over the southern border,” she said.

Lamont also wrote a letter along with Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, published Sunday in Newsweek, in favor of a bipartisan plan to curb what the letter called “an unmanageable border crisis.”

“It’s time for Washington to lead on this issue and pass bipartisan reforms to secure the border and restore an orderly immigration system that reflects America’s values as a welcoming nation of freedom-loving immigrants,” the letter said.

President Joe Biden has threatened to send National Guard troops to the border between Texas and Mexico after Gov. Greg Abbott defied a federal court order to remove razor wire from the border.

While Connecticut’s National Guard troops “are always ready should we be called upon,” Connecticut National Guard Public Affairs Officer Maj. Dave Pytlik said that hasn’t happened yet.

“As of now, the federal government has not requested our assistance for the border mission in 2024,” he said. “We regularly work with the Department of Defense for planning mobilizations, whether overseas or to the southwest border. Historically, in the late ‘90s our engineer units did rotate to the border for building projects during their annual training blocks.”

“As the governor said, Connecticut will support any call from the President for states to support the federal government in securing the border, including sending Connecticut National Guard troops to the border, if requested,” Lamont spokesperson Julia Bergman said.

Vickery said the state is prepared for an increase in immigration, but that bipartisan legislation would be preferable.

“Gov. Lamont and all Connecticut agencies have been devoting time and resources to developing a coordinated, organized reception for migrants arriving in the state,” she said. “We’d rather see a comprehensive bill pass.”

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said on CNN in December that Abbott should send migrants to Rhode Island, as well as Connecticut, Massachusetts and Oregon.

Meanie Zamenhof, director of refugee resettlement and legal services at Jewish Family Services of Greenwich, said she hopes that doesn’t happen, “but we will be fully prepared if it does.”

“The Connecticut government has organized a task force that has been meeting regularly over the past several months, putting emergency protocols in place to make sure that if or when this hits Connecticut, that we are prepared for the crisis, and we have a duty to respond,” she said.

William Turner, state emergency management director, said there is a plan in place for the state to manage a large influx of migrants to Connecticut.

“Our governor instructed the Department of Social Services and our department to work together and come up with a plan that if we start to see these large influxes, whether they’re coming by plane or train or bus, getting dropped off in Connecticut, that we have a plan in place to welcome them and make sure that they’re taken care of,” he said. “So we developed that plan.”

Larger cities in Connecticut have already determined municipal buildings — schools, town halls, etc. — that can act as emergency shelters for large groups of people. The state Department of Transportation already has a contract in place to transport people to more permanent shelters, hotels perhaps, arrangements with which are already in place.