Culture & Community | Immigration
NHFT President Leslie Blatteau, Monse, and NILC Executive Director Kica Matos. Lucy Gellman Photos.
It was supposed to be another school drop off, one of the last before summer break.
Instead, two children watched in horror as masked immigration agents pulled up outside their home, boxed their mother in with four cars, and took her away in handcuffs. Now, they don’t know if or when they will see her again.
Thirteen-year-old Monse brought that story to the Robert N. Giaimo Federal Building Wednesday afternoon, as she recalled the pain and panic of watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents take her mother away from their Frank Street home on Monday morning. Addressing hundreds of listeners at a rally, she laid bare the inhumanity of the moment, in which Donald Trump’s federal immigration policy is tearing apart and disappearing families like hers. Not because they pose a threat to public safety, but simply because they are immigrants.
The New Haven Immigrants Coalition’s rapid response line is 854.666.4472. ULA's rapid response line is 475.323.9413.
John Lugo, who has led Unidad Latina en Acción for 20 years.
“You're not just doing this to my family, you're also hurting other immigrant families who need their parents at home,” she said, fighting back tears that quickly came. “You’re causing a lot of pain to these families by taking them away, just because. You have no reason to do so. I would understand if they’d done something very illegal, but in this case, my mom is one of the victims.”
It marks the first time since Trump’s reelection that organizers have rallied publicly around a specific case in New Haven, although they have been doing court accompaniments, public service alerts, speakouts against Avelo Airlines, and community “Know Your Rights” trainings for months. This week, the action also comes as Trump's deployment of the National Guard turns L.A. into a police state and Meriden students honor Kevin Rosero Moreno, a senior at Francis T. Maloney High School who was detained by ICE last week.
On Monday, four employees were also arrested from a Southington-based car wash during an ICE raid.
Organizers included Unidad Latina en Acción, the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, the Democratic Socialists of America, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), Jewish Voice for Peace, New Haven Federation of Teachers and the Party for Socialism and Liberation among others. In the crowd, attendees included clergy members, immigrant rights activists, nonprofit leaders, business owners, artists, veterans and parents with small kids.
NILC Executive Director Kica Matos. "We are a proud city of?" she said as she took the mic. "Immigrants!" the crowd cried back. "And we are here to?" she continued. "Stay!" answered the crowd.
"Kidnapping a resident of the city in front of her children is unacceptable,” said NILC Executive Director Kica Matos, who has been fighting for immigrants for decades, including at the national level. “Our message to ICE is clear. Leave our city. We don't want you in our schools. We don't want you in our places of worship. We don't want you in our hospitals. We don't want you in our streets."
That was and is especially true for Monse, who now turns to the phone—rather than the once-safe, Frank Street home where she lives—as a lifeline to her mom. On Monday, she and her younger brother were headed to school when ICE officials showed up outside her home, and demanded that her mom get out of the car. Minutes later, ICE pulled her away in handcuffs as she and her brother watched.
On a video from nearby surveillance cameras, a person can see and hear the chaos of the moment, from the confusion of the mother and her kids to four agents who repeat themselves only in English, growing more and more curt every time they speak. Surrounding her on all sides, the ICE agents are dressed like bank robbers, in ski masks and bulletproof vests.
Brian Timko, who later spoke out as a veteran who is against the current administration.
Monse, who translates part of the commotion, is so strong: we hear her comfort her brother, who has autism, and then press the agents on the cause for arrest and the place they are taking her mother. At one point, there is a sharp keening from the sidewalk, where the children stand with their grandmother. Someone yells “Mamá!” It is enough to bring a listener to their knees. It is the sound of a New Haven family being ripped apart.
“Calling her once a day hurts so much,” Monse said Wednesday afternoon, her voice breaking. At 13, she still thinks of her mom as her best friend. At home, it is her mom who has taught her to be kind and generous with others, to focus in school, to share what limited resources she had with those around her.
It is her mom, too, who works doggedly each day to provide for her children. It is her mom into whom she can pour secrets, her mom from whom she is learning to cook, her mom who she looks forward to seeing after school every day. Before Monday, her mom routinely checked in on teachers, made sure there was always food on the table, and urged her kids “to have a bright future ahead of us,” Monse said.
Pastor Gini King. "Saint Paul gave us a prayer when the people of his city were being picked up by the Roman ICE people," she said. "And his words are: 'Stand up, keep walking.' Stand up, keep walking. Don't be overwhelmed by fear, and together we can make a difference."
“I hope you genuinely consider what you’re doing to my family,” she said. Beside her, both Matos and NHFT President Leslie Blatteau—both moms to their own kids, and second and third moms to so many young New Haveners—struggled to keep it together. “Because staying up late at night waiting to get a call or thinking about my mom hurts me so much. It hurts me deeply … I need my mother back home. She’s a very special person in my life.”
In the wake of Monday’s raid, NHFT President Leslie Blatteau said that she is part of a rapid response team that also includes teachers at the school the children attend. Both she and Monse praised the school for providing constant support and checking in on the family.
“The federal government is not keeping us safe,” Blatteau said. “We have an obligation to keep ourselves safe. We have an obligation to keep our communities safe.”
“Enough Is Enough”
Mayor Justin Elicker: “It is shocking and New Haven will fight back with every possible resource that we have.”
Wednesday, speaker after speaker also stressed the need for shared safety, from justice for immigrant families to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, and stronger protections for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in and well beyond New Haven.
Lugo, who has led Unidad Latina en Acción for two decades, remembered with emotion the call that ULA members received Monday morning, after ICE officials had showed up on Frank Street. They had been at a court accompaniment when they heard that there had been a raid. He doesn’t want that for any Connecticut resident, he said.
“We say, enough is enough and we have to say something about it,” he said.
That was also true for 18-year-old Ella Rossi, a classmate of Moreno’s who noticed an empty chair beside her at graduation earlier this week, and realized with anguish that it belonged to her friend. Instead of walking across the stage for his diploma, Moreno was sitting in an overcrowded detention facility in Texas, where he and his dad were transferred after showing up for a scheduled check in with ICE officials in Hartford.
It’s part of a larger pattern, in which people have been arrested at their schools, ICE check-ins, houses of worship, places of employment, and court appearances. And for Rossi, who wore a bright beaded necklace that read Justice For Kevin, it has to stop.
Ella Rossi, whose classmate was arrested and detained by ICE three days before their high school graduation.
Looking out onto a packed Orange Street, where attendees and press stood shoulder to shoulder, she called for solidarity between protest movements, in which white supremacy is often used as a tool to divide people.
“Having that empty chair at graduation was just a terrible reminder of what’s going on in our country right now, and what’s going on in our own school system,” she said. “This is absolutely unacceptable. Our government officials should be protecting our youth, our parents, our elders, our children, our disabled, our LGBTQ, our Palestinians and everyone else.”
If ICE can disappear immigrants in broad daylight, she and others added, it is only a matter of time until it begins to do the same to citizens. Leading a call-and-response (“We are a proud city of?/Immigrants!/And we are here to/Stay!”) Matos reminded attendees that no person is immune to government overreach in an authoritarian state. Immigrants are just the first scapegoat.
"The path to authoritarianism in this country is being built on the backs of immigrants,” she said. “And here is the thing. They will start with immigrants, but they will not end with immigrants. And if we do not step up and fight back to defend our immigrants, they will eventually come for all of us."
“These two children now have to deal with a mother that disappeared one day when they were going to a New Haven Public School,” added Mayor Justin Elicker, who Wednesday night released a full statement denouncing ICE, and at the rally reminded attendees that New Haven has sued the Trump Administration over challenges to its "Welcoming City" status. “It is shocking and New Haven will fight back with every possible resource that we have.”
Fable Burley, a member of Trans Haven and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, also pointed to the sheer violence that ICE often enacts on communities, from immigration raids in and near schools to the end of due process as Americans know and understand it. ICE’s presence isn’t about safety, Burley said: it’s about power, militarism, and force. It’s about finding the scapegoats.
“And that is why, when they come for one of us, they face us all!” they shouted, and the crowd cheered back. “Because whatever they do to immigrants, they will do to everyone.”
A short walk away, several veterans echoed that message, drawing on their own experiences from combat as they spoke out in defense of immigrants. Brian Timko, an organizer for ULA, remembered serving alongside Latinos in the military, many of whom had enlisted in the hopes that it would give them a better life in the U.S. What Timko discovered instead was an institution that treated people as though they were disposable.
“I watched them serve honorably. I watched them get discharged honorably. And I watched them get deported,” Timko said. “The only ones who can stop this is us.”