By CHRIS POWELL
Speaking to the General Assembly last week, Governor Lamont felt obliged to rile up members of his party’s big majority against immigration law enforcement. Referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the governor said: “ICE, everywhere you go uninvited, violence follows. Go home. We’re keeping Connecticut safe without you.”
Democratic legislators stood up, whooped, and cheered.
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But even as the governor spoke, a few blocks away from the state Capitol at the federal courthouse in Hartford an illegal immigrant from Jamaica who had been living in New Haven was sentenced to 22 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to illegally re-entering the United States.
The Hartford Courant reports that the man already had served four years in prison on state drug, weapons, and forgery charges and had been deported back to Jamaica in 2018. Returning illegally, he obtained a California driver’s license under a false name and registered two cars in Connecticut, though Connecticut, a “sanctuary state” like California, also would have been glad to give him a driver’s license. In 2023 a state warrant charged him with breach of peace and threatening but he remained at large until the federal government apprehended him.
State government did not keep Connecticut safe against this guy and hasn’t kept Connecticut safe against many others like him. ICE has apprehended many illegal immigrant criminals in Connecticut, as well as many ordinary illegals the governor would exempt from enforcement.
Indeed, in telling ICE to “go home,” the governor suggested that it’s improper for immigration agents to be in Connecticut at all — that Connecticut is not part of the United States and that the federal government has no law enforcement power here. That position is insurrection and nullification, just as it was in the last century when Southern governors told federal agents to go home and not bother their states for violating the Constitution and federal civil rights law.
Addressing the legislature, the governor also lamented the death of “that young mother shot twice in the head in Minneapolis,” Renee Good.
“The White House called her a domestic terrorist,” the governor noted. “She reminded me of my daughter.”
Yes, “domestic terrorist” was gross exaggeration, and some ICE agents, like some regular police officers, commit excesses.
But Renee Good wasn’t shot by an ICE agent for no reason. She was shot because, after parking her car perpendicularly across a street to obstruct an immigration law enforcement action in concert with people blowing whistles and making noise to warn enforcement targets — that is, after committing a federal felony — she tried to drive away to evade arrest and struck or nearly struck an ICE agent, who shot her.
Good and her associates weren’t “domestic terrorists” but nullifiers and insurrectionists who went looking for trouble. Unfortunately Good found it, as did the other Minneapolis resident killed by ICE agents while seeking to obstruct enforcement, Alex Pretti.
It may be hoped that the governor’s daughter knows better than to do stuff like that.
But many nullifiers and insurrectionists in Connecticut don’t know better.
A few weeks ago some of them rioted outside the garage of the federal courthouse in Hartford, trying to prevent immigration agents from taking a detainee away. The rioters broke the window of one of the exiting ICE vehicles. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam approved and blamed President Trump for the riot.
Now, according to the New Haven Independent, nullifiers and insurrectionists in New Haven are incorporating Minneapolis obstruction tactics, tracking ICE agents, blowing whistles and making other noise, and posting on the internet the locations of agents so their targets can escape — more federal felonies.
This will risk or even seek confrontation as in Minneapolis. What does the governor think of such conduct? What does Attorney General William Tong, who also often sounds like a nullifier, think of it? Will journalists ask them?
The nullifiers and insurrectionists in New Haven are looking for a fight. Will the governor and attorney general advise against it or let it happen and then blame ICE?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 