Connecticut has not been much in the national news about immigration. But last week, I was part of a colloquium in Stamford, Connecticut, that reminded me once again: the ICE enforcement we saw so dramatically in Minneapolis and Chicago and Los Angeles is still going on, in different forms, in communities all around the country.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, and when I think about it, I wasn’t. In April of 2025 IRI and Connecticut Voices for Children co-published a report about what’s at risk for the state in a regime of mass deportation. Hearing the human stories up close, though, is always different.
The event was convened by a group called Building One Community that provides services and a warm welcome for newcomers to the area, very much including immigrants. What the executive director said in an introduction was really stirring, and she agreed to let me share it here.
Marissa Muñoz, executive director of Building One Community:
I want to start by naming what is actually happening. Because it is happening right here, in Stamford.
Two weeks ago, ICE swept through Fairfield County and took more than 100 people in a single week. In a park. At a day laborer site. At a school bus stop.
People going about their lives. Showing up to work. Walking their children to school.
What happened here was indiscriminate and cruel. Dozens were shipped to detention centers as far away as Colorado—hundreds of miles from their families and access to legal support. Neighbors were afraid to leave their homes. Families were torn apart overnight.
And who was being taken? [Connecticut] Senator Blumenthal confirmed that more than 90 percent of those arrested had no pending criminal charges whatsoever. Nationally, two-thirds of the over 400,000 ICE arrests since January 2025 involved no criminal conviction. Not the worst of the worst.
And then there is TPS. This administration has ended Temporary Protected Status for 13 of the 17 countries that held it—stripping legal status from 1.5 million people who had been living and working here lawfully. At the end of July, 350,000 Haitian nationals lost their status. 170,000 Salvadorans now face the same fate.
The impact is already being felt here. Connecticut has over 4,000 Haitian TPS holders. In Stamford alone, more than 7,000 residents are of Haitian descent—people who have been here for years, if not decades—who have set roots and built lives here. Who became part of the fabric of this city.
And overnight, they lost the right to work. Parents are trying to explain to their children why everything has changed. Families are making plans they never imagined having to make—who will care for the children, what happens to the mortgage, what becomes of my livelihood. People who did everything right now wake up each morning not knowing if today is the day everything ends.
And Connecticut is already feeling their absence.
In Connecticut’s healthcare system, at least 100 workers—certified nursing assistants, nurses, home health aides, the people who care for our most vulnerable—have already lost their jobs. And those families live in uncertainty of what comes next.
The human cost of that is immediate, devastating, and incalculable. And the economic cost—as I shared earlier tonight, and as our panelists will make even clearer—is being felt by everyone.
So tonight’s question is not just an economic one. It is a moral one. What do we do—as a city, as a state, as a community—when a critical part of our workforce is missing? When the people who care for our parents, build our hospitals, and start our small businesses are living in fear or forced to leave?
That statement kicked off a powerful evening. I was onstage with Leah Kagan, who is director of economic development for the City of Stamford, and Grace Suh who is chief of staff at the State of Connecticut Office of Workforce Strategy.
For my part, I talked about the economic role of immigrants, the ways a regime of mass deportation hurts us all, and some of the things that I have found inspiring in community reactions. Yes, I also mentioned the Bruce Springsteen song.
We had a very good conversation, with an engaging response from the audience. And I think we all walked away still thinking about Marissa’s question: when we see this happening in Stamford, in Minneapolis, in Chicago, in Los Angeles…what do we do?
Photo on front page: Leah Kagan, David Dyssegaard Kallick, Grace Suh (left to right). Photo courtesy of Building One Community. Photography by Peter Corbett.