Top: Cynthia Sanchez. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Growing up in a mixed-status immigrant household, Cynthia Sanchez knew what it felt like to live in the constant, quiet presence of fear. It was there, lurking, when she left the house for school. It was there when she came home. For years, it kept her largely silent, afraid to speak out publicly despite her U.S. citizenship. For at least a year, it has meant that she doesn’t leave the house without a passport, even if she’s just running to the grocery store.
But when she heard that a fellow student at Southern Connecticut State University had been arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week, there was no doubt in her mind about what she had to do.
“She needs us and we showed up because we’re part of the community,” said Sanchez, a junior and political science major who is the president of SCSU’s College Democrats. “We stand up because it is right … we stand up because we are choosing compassion over fear.”
Monday afternoon, that sense of community rippled across SCSU’s main campus, as roughly 200 students, organizers, and concerned community members gathered outside Buley Library to rally for Keyla, an SCSU nursing student who was arrested by ICE agents last week outside the Middlesex Courthouse in Middletown.
Speakers included SCSU students and alumni, members of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition (NHIC) and Unidad Latina en Acción, Danbury Unites for Immigrants, Connecticut Students for a Dream, UNITE HERE Local 217, the American Association of University Professors, and others. Tate Kerr, an SCSU junior who is studying psychology, emceed the event alongside NHIC member and activist Sam Morrison.
Organizer Sam Morrison. "No borders! No nations! Stop the deportations!" he said at one point, leading the chant until the entire crowd had caught on.
In a nod to Keyla’s family, members of which have requested privacy at this time, organizers did not share identifying details about her, her studies at SCSU, or the arrest. The Arts Paper is only sharing her first name, which was already public at the time of publication, out of respect for those wishes.
“We don’t have very many details,” said Tabitha Sookdeo, who is currently the executive director of Connecticut Students for a Dream, stressing the importance of raising fees for legal representation. Currently, organizers have set up a GoFundMe to help raise some of that money. “She’s scared. Being in a detention facility is terrible.”
Sookdeo confirmed that the family has legal representation and that Keyla is being held in a detention facility “in the Northeast” (Monday afternoon, the New Haven Independent reported that she is at the Strafford County Corrections center in New Hampshire). Sookdeo added that she is working with fellow immigrant rights advocates in “a race against the clock” to collect letters of support from elected officials, including from Gov. Ned Lamont.
Throughout, students, staff, and community organizers all stressed the importance of solidarity with immigrant students and their families, particularly as ICE ramps up its presence in Connecticut, including in sanctuary cities like New Haven and Hamden. Amidst calls of “When We Fight/We Win!,” “El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!” and “ICE Out Now!,” speakers and attendees alike demanded that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) release Keyla immediately, and allow her to continue her studies in New Haven without the heavy and constant fear of another arrest, detention, or deportation.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January of last year, ICE arrests have more than doubled in the state, leaving diverse, polyphonic cities like Danbury, New Haven, and Hartford especially vulnerable.
For some, including several first-generation college students and children of immigrants, news of the arrest hit especially close to home. A graduate of Metropolitan Business Academy in New Haven, Sanchez said she has been politically conscious for as long as she can remember—not by choice, so much as by necessity. Now a political science major at SCSU, she takes her U.S. passport with her everywhere she goes. Last year, she was horrified when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that racial profiling was suddenly constitutional.
But when ICE agents raided a Hamden car wash last year, taking eight people in the middle of the work day, she was afraid to speak out, she remembered. Months later, she can’t be silent anymore. “We need to walk the talk,” she said, adding that Monday’s attendees should press for stronger state legislation that protects immigrants and their families. “No student should have to fear detention while they navigate their right to due process.”
Morrison and Tate Kerr are pictured beside a sign that reads "No one is illegal on stolen land." “We are here today with a clear demand that our student must be brought home,” said Kerr, a junior studying psychology who also leads the school's Communist Club. “We will mobilize and unite and bring our student home!”
Justin Farmer, a candidate for state representative who is pursuing marine studies, women’s & gender studies, and journalism at SCSU, spoke candidly about growing up as the child of a Jamaican immigrant, who came to Connecticut in hopes of a better future for herself and her family. By the time he was 10 years old, he had three family members who had been deported or incarcerated. In Keyla’s story, he sees parts of his own.
“This is about our beloved community that we call Connecticut,” he said. “When we talk about people without status, people without papers, we don’t have to be exceptional … I don’t care if they want to be a street sweeper or a neurosurgeon, all of our rights should be upheld.”
That call remained powerful as members of Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) stepped forward, holding banners that read Throw Fire On ICE and channeled the work of the Taller de Gráfica Popular a century ago, across a man-made border in Mexico. John Lugo, who co-founded ULA over two decades ago, introduced the family of a New Havener named Stalin, who is being held at a detention center in New York on a $20,000 bond.
He explained that the sheer cost of bail is prohibitive for the family alone, and directed families to a GoFundMe that has raised just a fraction of the funds so far. Then he handed the mic to Stalin’s son and daughter, both young students in New Haven, who laid bare the actual, excruciating cost of a family separated by ICE.
Gladys Samanta Tentes-Pitiur, who spent 135 days in ICE detention, speaks out in defense of fellow immigrants.
"So my dad—” started his daughter before pausing, her voice wavering.
“Go ahead, baby,” urged Catherine John, head of Black & Brown United In Action.
“We really miss him and we want change,” she said.
“It’s been really hard,” said his ex-wife, adding that she feels deeply for Keyla’s family as they navigate the fear and uncertainty of this moment. Her son, who called his father’s arrest “unacceptable,” translated as she spoke. “I don’t wish this upon anybody … I imagine how her [Keyla’s] mom feels, how I would feel if it were my daughter.”
Several of Monday’s speakers also pointed to the need for Southern—and its sister universities across the state, to provide more resources to keep its students safe, from news alerting them to ICE or police activity on campus to more easily accessible resources to a school-wide policy against law enforcement. Nicholas McDonald, vice president of UNITE HERE Local 217, pledged staff support for SCSU students, “because the students support us!”
"We are a family."
“We are here in solidarity … we are a family,” said McDonald, who has worked in food service at SCSU for 31 years, and loves the students he works with. As a Jamaican immigrant, the news of a student’s arrest—basically, her kidnapping, he acknowledged—hits especially hard. “It’s sad to see that we live in a world where this can happen,” he said.
SCSU’s interim president, Dr. Sandra Minor Bulmer, stood at the back of the crowd during much of the action, but did not say anything during the event. In an email sent to students Monday, she did say that Southern is actively “working to gather more information while respecting the privacy of the individual and their family” and that “priority remains the safety, well-being, and dignity of everyone at Southern.”
Bulmer added her support for student and faculty protest done “in a respectful, lawful manner that centers care for one another.”