Sen. Harding Statement on ICE in CT Schools

For Immediate Release 

Sen. Stephen Harding today issued the following statement regarding the governor’s meeting with school superintendents to discuss ways to keep students safe from immigration enforcement.

“I too want children to attend school and to feel safe at school. I too am concerned about chronic absenteeism and social promotion. Hartford High School, for example, recently awarded a diploma to an illiterate student who is now suing city taxpayers for millions of dollars in damages.

To my knowledge, ICE is not conducting sweeping raids of schools.

When asked by the media, Gov. Lamont and the participants at today’s press conference offered zero examples of ICE doing this and admitted that ICE hasn’t done this.

The Connecticut Department of Education has issued guidance to all K-12 schools in response to concerns about possible immigration enforcement at schools so students and staff know how to handle the situation if something did happen.

But Gov. Lamont’s meeting today again highlights multiple glaring issues here in Connecticut.

1) Many Connecticut Democrats believe there should be no immigration law enforcement in our state. They want to keep criminal illegal aliens on our streets, on our dime.

2) Many Connecticut Democrats repeatedly insist Connecticut is not a ‘sanctuary state’. Ridiculous. We are the very definition of a sanctuary state, with Democrats protecting criminal aliens at the expense of Connecticut citizens.

3) Connecticut residents overwhelmingly support removing criminal illegal aliens from our streets, but to Connecticut Democrats, that’s an apparently a bad thing.  They had little if anything to say, for example, about ICE’s highly successful ‘Operation Broken Trust’ or the twice-deported Guatemalan man who was recently arrested for aggravated sex assault of a jogger in a New Haven dog park. Democrats also now want to prohibit state Department of Children and Families workers from talking to ICE with regard to the sex trafficking of children.

4) Democrats, like Gov. Ned Lamont, openly state that all illegal immigrants are ‘welcome’ in Connecticut. Really? Even violent and murderous Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members?

Unbelievable and out of touch, but true. That’s one-party Democrat rule on full display here in deep-blue Connecticut.

Republicans continue to support legal immigration, educational achievement, law enforcement and victims of violent crime while demanding safer streets, safer schools and respect for the taxpayers’ money.”