Top: Cara Wilson, Adlin Rizal and Jonaily Colón. Bottom: Pastor Josh Williams with Alders Caroline Smith and Ellen Cupo. “No child should be taken from our community, no student should be robbed of their education, and no family should be torn apart,” said Smith, whose ward includes Wilbur Cross High School. “This is not justice, this is cruelty, and it has no place in our city." Lucy Gellman Photos.
In the months before finishing his sophomore year at Wilbur Cross High School, Esdrás R. was the kind of student every teacher dreams of having. He was bright and attentive in the classroom, as interested in supporting his peers as he was in the work in front of him. He pushed himself to improve reading and writing skills in English. He was never late to class.
He made time for advocacy, envisioning a more just world for all immigrants as a member of Connecticut Students for a Dream. He was supposed to spend this month getting ready for his junior year, which begins in late August. Instead, he has disappeared into the country’s increasingly authoritarian immigration system, shuttled from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to Louisiana without any semblance of due process.
It’s not just cruel: it’s fundamentally not American.
That message came again and again to Mitchell Drive on Wednesday afternoon, as hundreds of teachers, students, legislators, faith leaders and immigrant rights activists advocated for the safe and swift return of Esdrás to his New Haven community over a week after he was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a workplace raid in Southington.
Officials are holding Esdrás in the Alexandria Staging Facility in Alexandria, Louisiana. The prison, which USA Today has referred to as one of the Trump Administrations main “deportation hubs,” has a built-in airport that deports migrants—including on planes owned and operated by Avelo Airlines, which also flies out of Tweed Airport. There is currently a GoFundMe to cover his legal fees: donate to it here.
Top: Connecticut Students for a Dream Organizer Yenimar Cortes. Bottom: C4D member Eric Cruz López.
Amidst cries of “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” and “When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?/Stand up fight back,” speaker after speaker stressed the profound, unconstitutional and alarming inhumanity of ICE’s actions, in which a New Haven teen was taken from his workplace, shuttled between detention facilities across three states, and not allowed to speak with his lawyer or family for several days.
“These arrests are not happening in far off detention centers,” said Connecticut Students for a Dream (C4D) member Melany Yunga, a fellow student at Wilbur Cross. “They’re happening right here in our neighborhoods. In workplaces. At schools. In homes. And even on the street during routine traffic stops. They happened last week, with our fellow student and community member Esdrás.”
“Esdrás is a student, a son, and a good member of our community,” she added. “He doesn’t deserve to be locked up. No one does. And we will fight until he is free. We must continue to raise our voices ... because this is just not right. This is just not fair. This is just not human.”
It comes as ICE agents ramp up arrests across the state, including in New Haven. Earlier this month, CT Public reported that ICE has made 247 arrests in Connecticut since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January of this year (advocates have noted that the number is likely low). That includes the horrifying arrest of Nancy Martinez, a New Haven mom of two who ICE took in front of her young children last month, and deported to Mexico in shackles and chains.
Wednesday, some of the most powerful voices—and actions—were those of Esdrás’ peers, fellow New Haven Public Schools students and recent graduates who have been deeply shaken by the disappearance of one of their own. Alongside teachers and groups like C4D, Unidad Latina en Acción, and the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, they have been calling for the release of their classmate, with the understanding that it could be just as soon one of their friends.
This is not the first time a Wilbur Cross student has been taken by ICE: in 2019, junior Mario Aguilar Castañon was also arrested and detained. After significant advocacy and pressure from his peers, teachers, lawyers and organizers in New Haven, he returned home in January 2020.
Before the speaking lineup even began, friends Cara Wilson, Adlin Rizal and Jonaily Colón gathered in a huddle, eager to accept signs that read “Bring Esdrás Home” and “Hands Off Our Immigrant Students” from Sierra Fox, the new cantor at Congregation Mishkan Israel. Wednesday, all three said they came out because—after months of believing that Connecticut was immune to such violence—they realized how quickly a person’s life can be completely upended.
“I just feel like it’s really important to come out and show support,” said Rizal, a graduate of Hill Career Regional High School who will begin her studies at UConn in the fall. “I think a lot of us felt like we were safe in Connecticut.”
“That could have been one of our friends,” Colón chimed in. This fall, she’ll be starting her senior year at High School in the Community. She’s worried for her peers, New Haven Public Schools students who represent multiple cultures, languages, and countries across the globe.
That fear, and a righteous indignation that accompanied it, echoed over and over again. A recent graduate of Wilbur Cross and a former student representative on the New Haven Board of Education—and the proud child of an immigrant mom—John Carlos Serana Musser pointed to New Haven’s diverse and multilingual student body as a source of pride, rather than a data point that should ever attract the attention of federal immigration officials.
Despite the funding hurdles that richer, whiter districts may not grapple with, he is grateful for a student body that is “effortlessly diverse,” with half a dozen languages spoken and just as many beliefs in any given room. What he sees in Esdrás’ migration story, his advocacy, and his commitment to learning is a journey that is fundamentally American in its scope.
“I always found that diversity not only brings strength, it gives us hope,” he said, pointing to the 60 languages spoken in the New Haven Public Schools, and the hundreds of students who joined in advocacy efforts this year. “Diversity can teach us patience, endurance, and empathy. Diversity is the education of humanity and community … Why are we criminalizing, instituting fear, out of the American story?”
Top: C4D Executive Director Tabitha Sookdeo. Bottom: Poet Andreina “Andi” Barajas Novoa.
Nowhere, perhaps, was that clearer than in an action at the end of the speaking lineup, done almost entirely in silence. As the clock inched towards 4 p.m., 11 teens—most of them NHPS students and recent graduates, wearing medical masks to obscure their faces—emerged in chains and zip ties, their hands painted red as they held signs that read “Bring Esdrás Home.”
The image—of New Haven’s children in chains, their wrists straining against the thin plastic bands—recalled similar protest actions, from those of designer Willy Chavarria at Paris Fashion Week to artist-activists in Los Angeles, as the National Guard descended on the city during mass immigration raids earlier this summer. It was organized by Ambar Santiago-Rojas, a member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition and the Semilla Collective.
“As a student, it’s hard to focus while thinking of the family of Esdrás,” said Santiago-Rojas, who is herself the daughter of immigrants, and graduated from ESUMS in June. “The thought of how it is being torn apart keeps creeping in.”
She urged attendees to step up, and not just on their Instagram and Facebook feeds. Instead of keyboard warriors, she wants to see dedicated action, from an economic boycott of business that support deportation, cruelty and genocide at home and abroad to showing up at actions and organizing meetings. “Wake up and do not wait until it’s your parents, siblings, cousins, friends.”
Pastor Josh Williams leads the crowd in prayer.
As students stood, Bridgeport-based C4D organizer Eric Cruz López explained that the action referenced the inhumane five-point restraint system—which includes shackles on the wrists and angles—in which migrants are often placed as they are transported between prisons and put on deportation flights without due process.
That message flowed through the whole event, from a call from Pastor Josh Williams to remember what it was like to be a high schooler (“one thing you probably didn’t go through was one day thinking that you would be stolen, kidnapped, taken, and not know where you were going,” he said with an edge of anguish in his voice) to a poem from Andreina “Andi” Barajas Novoa, an organizer whose own Mexican heritage has informed their work.
“I want you to use this journal to draw out your wildest dreams. Dream big,” they urged toward the end of the rally, reading from a poem in both English and Spanish. “My parents taught me that love is all you need to live a life full of happiness. We will live to see the sunrise; we will live to watch the clouds gracefully pass above us; we will live to play with the stray cats who call our backyards their home.”
“We will live to laugh until the sunsets and then afterwards we will sleep to wake up the next day and live some more. We will live long enough until life tells us we have had enough; at which point, our souls will exist amongst the clouds, the grass, and every beautiful soul we met while we were alive. Today, and everyday thereafter, we will live and love until we can't anymore.”
After nearly every speaker, hundreds of voices joined in the same chorus: “Bring Esdrás Home!”
Ana Paola Juarez, a member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition who came to New Haven from Mexico as a child, repeated the words back, sometimes on the verge of tears. As the eldest of five children, she was often a de facto translator for her parents and a caretaker for her siblings, a role that she still takes on as second nature. Although she and her parents are now citizens, she said, “the fear never goes away.”
“This could have been me or my family years ago,” she said. “It never goes away, that fear of needing to look over your shoulder, even though you have this paper that says you have citizenship.”
That anger extended to legislators who attended, some cheering along from a swelling crowd as others to the mic. In addition to statements from U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and Mayor Justin Elicker, multiple elected officials took the mic, their emotion sometimes raw and palpable as they spoke.
“What we’re seeing right now are a bunch of thugs, hiding their faces,” said State Sen. Gary Winfield, who slammed colleagues in the state legislature who have remained silent on the issue. As he hoped aloud for Esdrás’ safe return, he pointed to the racism, the inequity, and the fundamental lack of empathy that is baked into not just the Trump Administration’s policies, but into the bones of America itself.
“They’re kidnapping our friends, they’re kidnapping our sons, our daughters, and for what?” Winfield said aloud. “This is a nation that has always had an immigration policy that was exclusionary … that was built, just like this nation, on imperialism and racism … This has nothing to do with what’s best for this country.”
Magna Natal: “He [Esdrás] should be looking forward to starting his junior year here, at Cross. Not worrying about how to get back home to New Haven.”
Throughout, multiple educators and administrators also came forward to speak about the work that the district is doing to prepare students and teachers to prepare for potential immigration raids as school resumes in late August. In January of this year, Trump rescinded a policy that marked schools, hospitals, and houses of worship as off-limits to ICE.
Leslie Blatteau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, recalled a number of “Know Your Rights” trainings for NHPS teachers, administrator and staff earlier this year, as Trump took office after a campaign built on anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear mongering. The hope of those, she said, was to equip every NHPS staffer with the skills to protect their students.
“We were told that we will not cooperate with ICE, we will make sure they have a warrant, and we will turn them away because our schools need to be safe for our students.”
“We are committed to making sure our students feel safe living, working and going to school in this city,” said Magda Natal, who taught Esdrás in her classroom at Wilbur Cross. “He [Esdrás] should be looking forward to starting his junior year here, at Cross. Not worrying about how to get back home to New Haven.”