By YAYA MARIAH
“I heard the tires screeching to a halt, and I ran to the window. And that’s when I saw the masked men. I heard a scream,” one neighbor told Channel 3 Eyewitness News in describing an Oct. 15 ICE raid in Hamden, Conn.
The video is terrifying: Two unmarked vans pull to a stop in front of a car wash. About ten burly men in black masks emerge from the vehicles and sweep into the building. Video from inside the car wash shows ICE agents in black masks chasing and tackling a young woman who had tried to get away.
In all, eight people—seven employees and one customer—were taken out in handcuffs. Most of the victims were young women; some had children stranded at home or in school.
Incidents like this are increasingly common throughout the United States as ICE is given free rein to disrupt and terrify immigrant communities. The fury of the Trump administration’s war against immigrants and other so-called “enemies” underscores the importance of the community forum that took place at Central Connecticut State University several weeks before the Hamden raid, on Sept. 25. The event, “Freedom Under Fire: Defending Our Rights, Past, and Present,” was co-sponsored by CCSU Social Justice Minor and CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee.
The panel discussion began with video taken that very day: “Help! Help me! Ayúdame!” Speakers crackled with the cries of a man forcefully pushed to the ground by two officers in Hyattsville, Md. The audience watched on, muffling their tears.
Juan Fonseca Tapia, member and leader of the Greater Danbury United for Immigrants, shared videos of ICE attacks throughout the country, his personal encounters, and confrontations with ICE agents and police in Danbury, Conn., the “epicenter for ICE activity in the state,” long before the Trump administration.
Back in 2006, Fonseca Tapia told the group, a sting operation had been set up in which 11 day laborers were lured into a van of an undercover cop posing as a contractor, promising them work. They were then detained and turned over to federal immigration agents. The detained workers became known as the “Danbury 11,” and community members organized a historic, successful struggle to win their release.
The movement to free the Danbury 11 was largely independent from and antagonistic to the Democratic Party and local police. Actions were organized through mass assemblies of hundreds and sometimes thousands of migrant workers. Local campaigns like “Free Danbury 11,” along with the May Day “Day without Immigrants” strike, were the context for new support of immigrant justice organizing. The effort pushed back some of the most reactionary goals of the bipartisan war on immigrants.
Despite important class-struggle victories, migrant workers are currently facing a massive campaign to spread feelings of fear, isolation, and deep demoralization. Juan’s talk continued by highlighting local resistance from community organizers in Connecticut. One example is the Danbury Unites for Immigrants’ (DUFI) Rapid Response Team, a trained sector of the group that can quickly respond to ICE activities, warning others of ICE’s presence, videoing detainments, and bringing La Migra out of the shadows.
A few videos that he showed pertained to the arrests in Danbury on Aug. 14, when an estimated 40 to 50 agents ambushed the parking lot courthouse, and arrested three people. One of those arrested was a young man, no older than 20, for a noise complaint. Danbury community members legally recorded and spoke with the group of officers. This operation was part of the statewide “Operation Broken Trust,” which arrested over 60 migrants over the course of three weeks.
The majority arrested during “Broken Trust” had no criminal allegations against them of any kind. In DUFI’s video from Danbury Court, ICE agents are dressed in tactical gear, most wore masks, and all refused to respond to repeated calls to identify themselves. They physically pushed members of the Response Team and threatened to tase, pepper spray, and arrest them.
These experiences aren’t unique, confessed the next panelist Jacqueline Rose, an organizer involved in the fight for Palestinian liberation. Citing the case of their friend and comrade, Isett, an international student who was targeted and stalked by police after the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. Fearing for her safety, Isett ultimately left the country, forced to miss her own graduation.
Isett’s story is just one example of a much larger and coordinated crackdown on student activism for Palestine. Rose explained how across the country, universities suppress student organization through suspensions, mass disciplinary hearings, police surveillance, and collaboration with federal agencies. These attacks are part of a nationwide strategy to delegitimize and criminalize the broader movement for Palestine liberation—backed by both Zionist lobbying groups and government pressure—to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
According to Rose, this kind of targeted repression signals a broader shift: universities are ground zero for silencing dissent before those same tactics are deployed against the wider public. From the suppression of pro-Palestinian groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), increasing attacks on faculty fired or placed on leave for their support for Palestine and LGBTIA+ studies, the criminalization of the trans community, designating ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization, to the outright cancellation of anyone who critiques the current administration—like Jimmy Kimmel.
“An injury to one is an injury to all,” Rose emphasized, adding that the administration fears the stories of resilience and revolution. “It’s up to us [the people] to defend each other.”
Christine Marie, a movement historian and activist with CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee, picked up where Rose left off. She concluded the panel by drawing parallels between current struggles and earlier waves of political repression. She explained how, despite setbacks and apparent “defeats,” civil liberty activists persisted, inspiring public engagement and resistance. She outlined key moments of state repression, starting with the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. A critical touchstone was the “Palmer Raids” in 1919, when the U.S. government cracked down on trade unionists, socialists, and anarchists, culminating in the deportation of hundreds of working-class organizers.
Marie wove together stories of repression and resistance in the United States, including the “little red scares” during the 1920s and the Great Depression. These lesser-known moments of authoritarian drift help to highlight the class dynamics of repression and need for mass working-class defense organizations. Throughout the 1920s, for example, thousands of union locals were affiliated with the International Labor Defense (ILD), initiated by the Communist Party. The ILD brought solidarity against political repression into working-class life all over the country through its newspaper, fundraising, and nationwide speaking tours.
She also gave important and often overlooked victories against repression and censorship. These included the case of James Kutcher. Often known as “The Case of the Legless Veteran,” due to Kutcher’s having lost his legs to mortar fire in Italy during World War II, this episode began when Kutcher was fired from his job at the Veterans Administration for his political support of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1948. Supporters of democratic rights immediately began mobilizing a massive defense campaign, which exposed the government’s lies about Kutcher and the SWP, and spoke at meetings of thousands of workers, veterans, and other progressive activists. Ultimately, after a 10-year campaign, Kutcher was rehired with full back pay. This represented an important and rare defeat of the red scare attitude of the bosses and their political organizations.
While talking about the strategies that have won real struggles for democratic rights, Marie also explained how U.S. imperialism, with the support of sections of the union leadership, used the systematic targeting of radical union members and unions to create the long-term deradicalization of American labor movements since the 1970s. Her closing message was clear: learn from past defeats and use the legacy of liberty movements as “tools in defense of immigrant workers, free speech, and economic rights.” The time has come, she said, to get organized and to develop strategies that can win.
During the panel’s discussion, one audience member expressed a desire to see “more faces” at rallies, which sparked a conversation about the necessity of building not just larger protests, but deeply organized mass-action defense campaigns that are capable of protecting communities and winning real change. Rallies, it was noted, are a valuable starting point for networking, drawing in new people, and experiencing the power of collective action. But history shows that confronting the far right will require far more than protests themselves. In order to really push back the MAGA-led offensive, workers and oppressed people need strategy, structure, and sustained organizing. The task ahead is urgent, but not unprecedented.
Photo: Chants of “No fear, no hate, no ICE in our state” echo in the courtyard of the federal courthouse in Hartford, Conn., as protesters call out against ICE raids in Connecticut and across the country on June 9, 2025. (Ryan Caron King / Connecticut Public)