Bronin condemns raids
Bronin recalls issue of federal agents posing as police
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin condemned proposed nationwide raids to deport undocumented immigrants.
HARTFORD – Two days after President Donald Trump said he would delay nationwide raids to deport undocumented immigrants, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin condemned the proposed operation in a letter to local immigration authorities.
“This kind of enforcement will not improve public safety in Hartford, and even the consideration and threat of this kind of enforcement is damaging to public trust and creates unnecessary fear within our immigrant communities,” Bronin wrote Monday to Aldean Beaumont, the director of Hartford’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.
While ICE had been planning to sweep immigrant communities in 10 major cities beginning Sunday, Trump took to Twitter Saturday to announce he was holding off on the raids “to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution” to the country’s asylum laws.
If Democrats won’t bow to the proposed immigration changes, Trump said he will order the raids in two weeks.
Bronin also asked that ICE officials not “misrepresent their identity again by posing as Hartford police officers, or to use any City of Hartford facilities without prior authorization.”
In March 2017, two federal agents tried to detain a woman by calling her down to the Hartford public safety complex. The ICE agents waited in the lobby wearing black coats with “POLICE” written on the back, because “the ‘P’ word [police] is less scary than the ‘I’ word [immigration].” they reportedly told a Hartford lieutenant.
The mayor is not aware of any other instances of ICE agents disguising themselves as Hartford police or using city facilities without permission, city spokesman Vas Srivastava said.
In Bronin’s letter to Beaumont, he said those actions would be “unacceptable.”
“Even if you do not share my view that immigrants are our strength as a city and a nation, I amasking that, at the very least, you do not operate in a manner that interferes with the City of Hartford’s relationship with our residents,” he said.
His message also follows Gov. Ned Lamont signing legislation last week that restricts cooperation between law enforcement and federal immigration agents.
The new law, which strengthens the Trust Act passed in 2013, leaves only two cases when law enforcement in Connecticut can detain an undocumented immigrant for potential deportation without a judicial warrant: the immigrant is on a federal terrorist watch list or has been convicted of a major felony.
Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.