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They marched arm-in-arm down Main Street, paused for the cameras, then packed the Town Green to tell federal agents to get out of a city that spent years daring them to enforce the law.
Wednesday’s “Day Without an Immigrant” in Danbury was billed as solidarity. It looked like a get-out-the-vote rally ahead of midterms. Businesses closed. Flags for BLM, trans pride, NAACP, Working Families, SEIU, and the old Black Panther lined a truck along with Ecuador, Ethiopia, and one American flag for cover. Police walked alongside, more like partners in the march, while music blasted. They even had a Handmaid taking photos. The No Kings set never skips a beat.
Chants were the usual: “F*ck ICE.” “ICE out.” “Say it loud, say it clear, immigration is welcome here.” No one on the microphone drew a line between legal immigration and illegal presence. That line is the whole argument. Connecticut Democrats erased it years ago with the Trust Act, drive-only licenses, and a mayor who tells the crowd he is lucky because his parents came here illegally.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen. Chris Murphy, Gov. Ned Lamont, and Mayor Roberto Alves led from the front. Also in the mix: congressional hopeful Luke Bronin, Comptroller Sean Scanlon, Sens. MD Rahman and Julie Kushner, Reps. Anne Hughes and Matt Lesser, and the rest of the traveling sanctuary caucus. Rev. Tony Lorenzen of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation emceed. Mars Rodriguez of Working Families Power worked a megaphone on a crowd that was older and a lot whiter than the speeches implied. They stopped short of the Green until the shot was right, then pulled the “We the People Melt ICE” sign and its holders onto the stage so every phone would catch it.
Murphy told them nothing is more American than welcoming immigrants — no status check — and that if ICE “isn’t going to follow the law, ICE needs to get out of Danbury.” He wants Congress to starve the agency. He called out two alleged “lies”: that ICE is here to protect the city, and that illegal aliens commit crime at lower rates than citizens—even the RNC called him out on that whopper—and repeated the debunked bus-stop terror story.
Blumenthal started an “ICE OUT” chant, sprinkled in some Spanish for good measure, promised to “fight back for all of the people that have been brutalized,” and declared “cruelty is the point” of immigration enforcement. Someone in the crowd screamed they were “fighting Nazis.” That is the temperature set by Democrats. Then they demand that ICE lower it.
Julian Shafer, a Danbury World Studies and Civics teacher and vice president of NEA Danbury, led a chant to “bring them home,” named ICE their “opponent,” and said the agency is funded like the ninth-largest military on earth. He described a classroom of crying children whose families are afraid to go outside, then said his history class already “knows what is happening” and that the kids know their teachers were at the protest. These are the people teaching history. The missing lesson is that parents who enter illegally are directly responsible for putting those children in that fear. Then Shafer called ICE “diabolical” and vowed to keep telling ICE to get out of the state.
SEIU 1199’s President Rob Baril made no legal-illegal split either. He described union members as “victimized,” “in hiding,” in “self deportation,” and claimed a detainee had been “denied medication.” Then came the demand: he thinks everyone deserves housing, health care, education, and living wages “regardless of their status.” He told people to find the rapid-response networks. Raise money for people in hiding. Bear witness to “ICE terrorism.” He apparently wants a parallel welfare system to be created for people the federal government is trying to remove.
Rev. Sierra-Marie Gerfao repeatedly preached that ICE “underestimates Danbury,” claimed 65 families were “taken” and “disappeared,” and now felt “righteous anger.” Juan Fonseca Tapia said the city is not the land of the free because people fear leaving the house. He said “ICE kills” people inside their “concentration camp,” compared the moment to hunting Black Americans, demanded a $10 million state fund because “Connecticut has the money,” and told the attorney general to prosecute the “kidnappers.”
A very fired up Mayor Alves came out in Spanish first. He said they're protesting "because we’re pissed.” He claimed ICE was “brutally terrorizing the community.” He said he grew up undocumented and feared deportation, not “brutality" growing up. He said agents are not hitting the “worst of the worst,” they are hitting family members and "our workers.” He thanked activists, pushed donations to Danbury Unites for Immigrants, slammed the “madman in the White House,” and needled “Republican friends” for skipping a rally against enforcing federal law. Of course they skipped it.
Organizers said more than 60 shops closed to show “financial power.” Alves and advocates put last week’s Danbury tally around 70. The numbers bounce depending on who is doing the talking.
Congresswoman Jahana Hayes contacted ICE’s acting Boston field director about videos, pepper spray, and “lowering the temperature” at the end of August. She should have told Connecticut Democrats and activists to "lower the temperature" too, but she won't.
Legal immigration built this country. Illegal presence, plus a political class that calls enforcement “Nazism,” is what is breaking Danbury’s schools, its labor market, and its nerve. Wednesday was not "what democracy looks like." It was an opportunity for generating campaign material.
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