Category: Human Rights

Excerpts from State Sen. Gadkar-Wilcox Statement on Supreme Court Deportation Decision

Today [June 24, 2025], State Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox, a professor of constitutional law, released a statement in response to the Supreme Court decision that allows the deportation of undocumented immigrants to third-party countries. Sen. Gadkar-Wilcox argues that sending individuals to countries outside of the country of their origin, where they don’t speak the language, understand the culture, or share the same religion, and where they may face harm and violence, violates our most fundamental constitutional right to due process.

“The Supreme Court’s recent ruling allows the Trump administration to deport individuals to countries that are not their country of origin, including conflict zones and countries where they could face persecution – all without due process. Not only is this unconscionable, but it goes well beyond the pale of settled law.”

“We have already seen this administration send individuals to a prison in El Salvador known for human rights violations without so much as a charge. We have seen masked officers abduct a student off the street for exercising free speech. We have seen Donald Trump defy court orders that he does not agree with. We are witnessing an attack on our Constitution unfold before our eyes.”

“In 1944, the Korematsu v. US case legitimized the sending of more than 120,000 Americans of Japanese origin to internment camps. When we reflect on that case today, history shows us that Supreme Court cases that blatantly violate basic human rights will ultimately be remembered as a stain on the constitutional order of the United States. This administration and the Supreme Court would do well to look towards history and learn from our most shameful moments, not repeat them.”

One of the central purposes of due process is to ensure that people are not detained without a meaningful opportunity to be heard or deported to places where they would face violence and persecution. The due process right that the court undermines with this decision is so fundamental to our system of laws that it goes all the way back to the Magna Carta (1215): “No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.”

The court has held the line on due process in Boumediene v. Bush (2007) and JGG v. Trump (2025). In the former, which applied to detentions of non-US citizens after 9/11, and in the latter, in which the Supreme Court prohibited the Trump Administration from implementing the Alien Enemies Act to send deportees to El Salvador before providing due process to the accused, the court upheld due process. It should have provided that same due process here. This is the minimal constitutional requirement and a fundamental moral obligation.

No Kings! National Day of Defiance! June 14

Saturday, June 14, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Connecticut State Capitol, 210 Capitol Ave., Hartford.

In America, we don’t put up with would-be kings. NO KINGS is a national day of action and mass mobilization in response to increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption from Trump and his allies. We’ve watched as they’ve cracked down on free speech, detained people for their political views, threatened to deport American citizens, and defied the courts. They’ve done this all while continuing to serve and enrich their billionaire allies.

On Saturday, June 14, we’re taking to the streets nationwide. We’re not gathering to feed his ego. We’re building a movement that leaves him behind.

The flag doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. It belongs to us. We’re not watching history happen. We’re making it.

On June 14th, we’re showing up everywhere he isn’t—to say no thrones, no crowns, no kings. Check out nokings.org for more information.

A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.

[From the website www.mobilize.us/nokings/c/no-kings/event/create. Also see www.nokings.org and www.fiftyfifty.one.]

Emergency Protest and March Held in Hartford

As we prepared this issue for print, there was an emergency march in Hartford on March 21 to protect Gaza, protect immigrants, and protect free speech. Demands also included ending USA aid to Israel and freeing Mahmoud Khalil (a US permanent resident taken by ICE) and other immigrants and activists who have been detained because they’re activists for Palestinian rights. People rallied outside the ICE/federal building at 450 Main St. and then marched to the Capitol.

Earlier in the week, Israel violated the 2-month-old ceasefire and killed over 500 people in Gaza. Over 200 of the dead were children. Israel shortly thereafter sent in ground troops to Gaza.

For video of this rally and others, please see thestrugglevideo.org.

IRIS To Shutter Main Office

By Laura Glesby, March 5, New Haven Independent

New Haven’s flagship refugee resettlement agency is closing its main doors at 235 Nicoll St. and shifting to remote work and satellite locations after losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) has occupied the Nicoll Street office since 2006, where it has provided case management, education, job training, legal support, and health assistance to many hundreds of refugees and immigrants over decades.

In an email on Wednesday afternoon, Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem announced that due to funding slashes under President Donald Trump’s administration, the organization will cease operating from its East Rock home base by the end of March, with official plans to leave by April 30.

She told the Independent the organization is also “in the process of winding down our Hartford office.”

Mitchell Salem said in a phone interview that IRIS has so far laid off about half of its staff members since the start of the Trump administration. Now IRIS has a full-time staff of 45 employees.

IRIS will continue operating education programs out of the United Church on the Green’s Parish House at 323 Temple St., as well as its food pantry at 75 Hamilton St.

[To view the article in its entirety, please go to https://bit.ly/4bVJtXw]

New ICE Age Response Team: Prepare, Don’t Panic

by Paul Bass, Feb 18, New Haven Independent

[The following are excerpts. To read the entire article, please go to http://bit.ly/41dh0aA]

If an ICE (federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agent is indeed at the door: “I don’t wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United Stations Constitution … I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights … unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door …”

A coalition of 60 agencies and nonprofit groups is spreading those red cards, and that calm-but-ready message, to the heart of New Haven’s immigrant community, which is bracing for ICE mass deportation raids promised by the newly installed Trump administration. …

“Exactly what the Trump administration wants is just fear, to incite fear and panic and chaos,” Yenimar Cortes, New Haven organizer for CT Students For A Dream, said during a New ICE Age conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” She was joined by fellow organizers Fatima Rojas of Semilla Collective, Junta case worker Jacqueline Gonzalez, and high school youth organizer Ambar Santiago-Rojas.

An estimated 100,000 undocumented people live in Connecticut.
You can call the rapid response hotline at 220-666-4472. Rojas said people can call her at 203-747-4309 for information on attending the coalition’s Saturday community engagement meetings. Cortes invited people to contact her group at 203-787-0191 for information on Know Your Rights workshops.

CT Legislators Horrified by Account of Incarcerated Person’s Homicide

by Mark Pazniokas, February 14, CT Mirror

The death of Carl “Robby” Talbot in a jail cell thick with the choking fumes of a potent pepper spray was described Friday as the catastrophic consequence of excessive force and medical neglect, compounded by a forged use-of-force report and an ineffectual internal investigation.

Angel Quiros, the commissioner of correction, did not protest the lawmakers’ harsh assessment. Talbot’s mother, Colleen Lord, offered one dissent: Her son’s death also is a consequence of the criminalization of the mentally ill, a failure that began outside jailhouse walls, long before her Robby died.

The first public dissection of all that went wrong at the New Haven Correctional Center on March 21, 2019, came Friday in a Judiciary Committee hearing on whether to accept a proposed $3.75 million settlement of the federal lawsuit filed by Talbot’s estate.

Undisputed is that Talbot, 30, who had a history of mental illness and misdemeanor arrests, had become agitated after being jailed on a probation violation, and that a jailhouse supervisor, Lt. Carlos Padro, responded with four long point-blank bursts of pepper spray, twice in a shower room and again in an elevator and a cell.

Read the whole story here: https://ctmirror.org/2025/02/14/ct-inmate-death-hearing

 

 

As Temps Drop, Tiny Shelter Residents Double Up

Jabez Choi, Dec. 6, 2024, New Haven Independent

A group of unhoused neighbors have taken to sleeping two or even three to a room inside unheated pre-fabricated tiny shelters that are still standing in a Rosette Street backyard.

“When we do bundle up, it’s tolerable being in there,” said Robert Harris, as he pointed at a row of white Pallet shelters. “But sometimes it’s colder in these because it can be like an ice box.”

There are currently 14 people living in six different under-100-square-foot shelters that have stood for over a year in the backyard of the Amistad Catholic Worker House at 203 Rosette St. in the Hill.

Harris, who has been residing in that Rosette Street backyard since May, said that all the residents have numerous blankets and sleeping bags to keep warm throughout the night. Currently, he sleeps outside in what is called the “hut.” If the cold becomes unbearable, he sleeps inside the Amistad house, on a chair.

A group of homelessness activists — led by Amistad’s Mark and Luz Colville and their neighbors and supporters — first erected these six single-room shelters last fall to provide a roof for people displaced from cleared homeless encampments and who otherwise had nowhere else to go.

In July, the city called on UI to turn off the power in these shelters, following the expiration of a 180-day state permit allowing electricity to the backyard, thereby rendering those shelters “illegal dwelling units.” (The shelters do not have individual kitchens and bathrooms. As part of a suite of zoning relief granted by the Board of Zoning Appeals in March, the Amistad Catholic Worker House has to make available the main home’s bathroom and kitchen to the backyard residents.)

In the intervening five months, people have continued to sleep inside these six tiny shelters — which have only become more crowded with the onset of winter weather…

read the entire article at https://tinyurl.com/yck8s6yv

The Elm City’s Commitment to LGBTQ+ Equality

City of New Haven Press Release Nov. 22, 2024

Mayor Justin Elicker celebrated the City of New Haven receiving a score of 100 on the 2024 Municipal Equality Index (MEI), a comprehensive assessment of LGBTQ+ equality in the areas of municipal policies, law, and services, which is conducted annually by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization and the educational arm of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. As part of its work, the HRC Foundation conducts the MEI, which was released nationally on Thursday. The MEI “examines how inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ people who live and work there” and “cities are rated based on non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement and leadership on LGBTQ+ equality.”

New Haven received a score of 100 on the 2024 [MEI], the highest score that can be received by a municipality. This marks the first year that the City of New Haven has achieved this distinction, and New Haven is one of only two cities in Connecticut to receive an MEI score of 100, with the other being Stamford.

The index evaluated and recognized New Haven’s commitment to LGBTQ+ equality across several key areas, including: non-discrimination laws, the municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement policies, and leadership on LGBTQ+ equality.

One item of note is the city’s support of and partnership with the New Haven Pride Center, which provides a variety of critical services, free resources, and meaningful programming for LGBTQ+ residents of all ages. This includes monthly community dinners and social events, affinity social spaces, professional and personal development, a community food and toiletries pantry, a clothing closet, a lending library featuring LGBTQ+ books, among other services.

The score is also reflective of the city’s efforts to ensure LGBTQ+ residents are included and able to access city services and programs. Residents can connect with the city’s LGBTQ+ Liaison, Killian Gruber, at kgruber@newhavenct.gov or 203-946-4984, or the New Haven Youth and Recreation Department’s LGBTQ+ Liaison, Ernest Cloman, at ecloman@newhavenct.gov or 203-946-4939.

Read the entire article at https://www.newhavenct.gov/Home/Components/News/News/509/144

Pride Center Convenes Community To Heal

by Grayce Howe, Nov. 14, Arts Paper

Art acted as a form of resistance and relief last week, as dozens of community members gathered at the New Haven Pride Center for a night of post-election healing and artmaking. Often, they found themselves leaning on each other for support and encouragement, even as they searched for an answer to some of the grief and despair… The evening was co-hosted by the Greater New Haven Arts Council. In the interest of full transparency, the Arts Paper lives within, but is editorially independent from, the Arts Council.

Throughout the evening, the gathering aimed to combat feelings of unease that followed the election of Donald Trump… As president, he instituted legislative measures that included a ban on Muslim immigrants and refugees, multiple appointments to a now-conservative, anti-choice Supreme Court, significant environmental rollbacks, and direct calls meant to invigorate and activate millions of followers who were fueled by anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-woman ideals of a white nationalist America. During his 2024 campaign, he expanded that rhetoric, from calling into question whether Vice President Kamala Harris was and is in fact Black… to pushing for harsher immigration policies to insulting Haitians, Puerto Ricans, and all childless women within weeks of the election. In New Haven—a sanctuary city that has for years championed LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights—Tuesday’s result came as a crushing blow to many.

Thursday, it seemed that only compassionate community filled the room. In addition to a workshop from [Pride Center Executive Director Juancarlos] Soto—who, in addition to leading the Center, is a visual artist and fierce activist—the night included offerings from movement facilitator Vee Warden, holistic healer Thema Graves, drag queen Xiomarie LaBeija and poet, organizer and spoken word artist Sun Queen.

Throughout the evening, comments also came from Soto, Mayor Justin Elicker, and ACGNH Program Director Rebekah Moore and Executive Director Hope Chávez. The evening also included catering from the Ninth Square business Blue Orchid.

By the end of the night, participants’ moods were visibly lighter. Faces held smiles and laughed with new-made friends, inspired and hopeful for the future while empowerment overtook the previously overruling stress. That continued this week, as staff at the Pride Center set up a new corner of their space dedicated entirely to self-care.

[To read the original article visit https://www.newhavenarts.org/arts-paper/articles/pridecenter-convenes-community-to-heal

Open Letter from American Medical Professionals Who Served in Gaza

October 2, 2024

Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris,

We are 99 American physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Combined, we spent 254 weeks volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals and clinics. We worked with various nongovernmental organizations and the World Health Organization in hospitals and clinics throughout the Strip. In addition to our medical and surgical expertise, many of us have a public health background, as well as experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones, including Ukraine during the brutal Russian invasion. Some of us are veterans and reservists. We are a multifaith and multiethnic group. None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel. …

…[T]he human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.

Our government must act immediately to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what has already befallen the people of Gaza and Israel. A ceasefire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. We believe our government is obligated to do this, both under American law and International Humanitarian Law. We also believe it is the right thing to do.

Read the letter in its entirety here: https://www.gazahealthcareletters.org/usa-letter-oct-2-2024

‘Emma Jones Justice for Malik Corner’ OK’d

by Laura Glesby, Oct. 8, New Haven Independent

The corner where East Haven police officers chased, shot, and killed 21-year-old Malik Jones in 1997 will not be called “Malik Jones Corner” after all.

Instead, the Board of Alders decided to name that inter-section after Jones’s mother, Emma, and the campaign for police accountability she has carried forth after his death…. On Monday, Oct. 7, the full Board of Alders unanimously voted to amend the proposed corner name to “Emma Jones Justice For Malik Corner,” an edit proposed by Fair Haven Alder Frank Redente.

Redente … elaborated after the meeting that he heard passionate feedback from constituents about the corner-naming proposal in recent weeks.

Some opponents of the proposed corner name took issue with Malik’s criminal record… the input that primarily spurred his amendment Monday night was “more that Emma was being left out.” Emma Jones’s activism around the memory of her son led to the creation of New Haven’s Civilian Review Board to review complaints of police misconduct, a board on which Redente now serves…

As he introduced the amendment during Monday’s meeting at City Hall, Redente explained that the name “Emma Jones Justice for Malik Corner” would “shift away from the personal connection and toward justice.”

…[All] the alders present voted in favor of this name change.

The activists who had first submitted the corner name shuffled out of the room after the vote. [Norman] Clement immediately called Jones to update her…

“I think it’s important to have Malik’s name there because of what happened to him, and I never want people to forget,” Jones said. She praised how the new version puts her own name alongside Malik’s and “gives it a greater meaning.”

“It’s a great honor,” she said. “I didn’t expect to be honored. But I’m delighted that people thought enough of me to remember all of the work that I did do.”

She hopes it will speak to the terror that so many mothers of Black sons have felt and still feel — “your son goes out to the store to get a loaf of bread, and you’re terrified because you don’t know whether he’s coming back.”

“I will never forget what that officer did to my son,” she said. Now, neither will the street.

Article can be read in its entirety at https://tinyurl.com/kp997bb7.

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