The Danbury 11

On September 19, 2006 eleven Ecuadoran day laborers were lured into a van by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on the promise of a day's construction work. They were then arrested by local Danbury police and ICE agents and taken to jail in Hartford, then detention in Boston.

Nine of the eleven workers were finally released and are back in Danbury, though five of them were shipped to two immigration detention centers in Texas. In one case a man was released at 8:00 pm and left on the side of a road to fend for himself.

Since September, six more immigrant workers were detained in joint ICE/Danbury Police operations. In one case, the agents staked out a house looking for one man, but then arrested a roommate because he looked very similar.

The immigrant communities in Connecticut, along with their allies, responded to the raids with marches and rallies in September and October. In December, a group of Yale University law students filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a division, seeking records related to the September sting operation.

The Regional Coalition for Immigrant Rights will hold a public forum on the situation in Danbury on Saturday, February 3 in Hartford. Please contact David Amdur at damdur@afsc.org or 860-523-1534 for more information.