In the last couple of years the federal agency ICE, that enforces immigration laws, has detained tens of thousands of people around the country who are immigrants and who are undocumented. Most often, ICE does this by conducting raids in urban communities like the recent raid in Parkville. Their usual methods are that they go to an apartment building or some other location where they believe undocumented immigrants are likely to be, usually with a warrant or an order of deportation for one or more individuals. ICE agents then proceed to detain as many other undocumented people as they can find in the vicinity. They call these “collateral detentions.”

ICE prefers to conduct these raids where they have plenty of support from the local police and the local city administration. They also like it if local police make their jobs easier by routinely asking people about their immigration status, if they break the law or even if they are just witnesses in an investigation who have done nothing wrong.

Danbury is an example of a city where there is open and active collaboration between the city and ICE. New Haven has gone a different route, and the police there have been ordered not to ask people about their immigration status. Many of us believe that this is a better policy. We feel that regardless of someone’s immigration status they should not have to feel afraid of the local police. We also feel that our local communities should not be using our tax dollars to enforce federal policies with which we disagree. And we feel that legitimate public safety functions do not require finding out if someone is an immigrant or what their immigration status may be.

The Hartford resolution is the first step that the city has taken toward a real policy on dealing with immigration issues and ICE. The logical follow up would be an executive order or another resolution (like the one in New Haven) directing the police to keep out of immigration enforcement and not to make inquiries about peoples’ immigration status.

The benefit of the resolution may be that, combined with active political pressure from the people, it points to the direction that the City needs to go. But there is still a need for a policy, whether it is created by executive order or by another resolution.

[The joke...or my painful attempt at one...is that in 1978 the U.S. Congress passed a law referred to as the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. It states, among other things, that it is a goal of the U.S. government to strive for full employment, and that the feds can create employment opportunities when the private sector does not do enough to help achieve full employment. But it doesn't require the feds to do this, just says that they can. Well of course they can . . . but if they can and choose not to that doesn't do you much good, now, does it?]