Immigrant ​“Bus” Pulls In To Mayoral Debate

A hypothetical ​“bus of immigrants” rolled up to a Newhallville school auditorium Thursday night — revealing a divide among the city’s four Democratic mayoral candidates over just how much of a haven New Haven should be for new arrivals in need.

That ​“bus” arrived courtesy of a question asked by Ward 21 Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair Raymond Jackson halfway through a Democratic mayoral candidate forum that took place in the Lincoln Bassett School auditorium at 130 Bassett St.

Jackson asked the candidates how city government should react if New Haven became the next destination for busloads of undocumented immigrants.

The question came amid a citywide debate about how much of a say immigrants should have in the operations of local government. It also came against a backdrop of major cities like New York struggling to respond to a surge in migrants, and controversial Republican governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis seeking conservative cachet by flying asylum seekers from the red state of Texas to the blue enclave of Martha’s Vineyard and chartering buses filled with migrants from Texas to New York.

In response, Mayor Justin Elicker revealed that the city has indeed planned for what to do if a large group of migrants suddenly arrives on New Haven’s metaphorical shores. And that it’s ready to welcome them and triage them before working with the state to find more permanent housing for them across the region, and not just in New Haven.

Thursday’s forum was hosted by the Democratic ward co-chairs from Wards 19, 20, and 21. Several dozen Dixwell and Newhallville neighbors sat through nearly two and a half hours of campaign pitches, policy proposals, and electoral-year arguments and rebuttals by the four Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination in the Sept. 12 primary. 

The candidates included two-term incumbent Elicker, retired police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur, former legal aid attorney Liam Brennan, and ex-McKinsey consultant Tom Goldenberg. It was the second such forum hosted by neighboring Democratic ward committee co-chairs so far this election season.

The topics of debate ranged from gun violence to affordable housing to public meeting notices to Democratic self-categorization (Elicker: ​“liberal;” Brennan: ​“progressive;” Goldenberg: ​“moderate;” Abdussabur: ​“a Democrat that gets things done”). 

Jackson’s question provoked responses ranging from open-arms idealism, managerial pragmatism, local helplessness, and gestures towards nativism.

“New Haven is a sanctuary city,” Jackson said from the first row of the audience section of the room up to the four candidates on stage. ​“What would you do if a bus of immigrants was suddenly sent here?”

Abdussabur: "What About Our Community?"

Abdussabur got to answer Jackson’s question first.

“I’ve been watching this whole immigration thing unfolding,” he said, referencing the more than 60,000 migrants and asylum seekers who have arrived in New York City over the last year.

“New York City’s at capacity,” Abdussabur said. ​“Where are they gonna go? Can’t go to Stamford, can’t afford to live there. Can’t go to Black Rock. Can’t go to Fairfield. Bridgeport, maybe. And then New Haven.”

And when these hypothetical migrants get to New Haven, where will they go? he continued. Where they can afford to live, which will likely be ​“the most compressed, poor, uninvested communities in the city. Newhallville. Lilac Street. Fair Haven. Crunched up in houses with hardly no type of enforcement.” 

Just telling these migrants that New Haven is a sanctuary city won’t do anyone any good, Abdussabur said. ​“We need an immigration policy in this city. We need an immigration policy so that we don’t have to deal with what Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York is dealing with.”

Instead of detailing such a policy, Abdussabur went on to describe what he sees as the effect of surges of migration in these large cities across the country.

“African Americans and Hispanic and Latino communities [are] furious [in these cities]. Furious,” he said. ​“Because Boards of Alders and council people are being forced to give millions and millions of dollars for immigrants, and they’re saying: ​‘What about housing for us? What about our community? What about our jobs?”

As more than a handful of attendees applauded in response, Abdussabur clarified, ​“I’m not saying don’t let immigrants live here. Many of us are immigrants. I came from slavery. My great-grandfather’s great-grandfather came from slavery. The Great Migration. So we are kind of like immigrants. We came out of chains. So we all had a rough start in America.”

“But,” he continued, ​“if we’re not prioritizing taking care of our own community, how the hell are we going to have housing for somebody else that just got here?”

Brennan: "New Haven Is A Sanctuary City, & I Am Proud Of It"

Brennan offered a more unequivocally welcoming response during his two-minute chance to answer Jackson’s question.

“I want to say: New Haven is a sanctuary city, and I am proud of it,” he opened. 

He said New Haven — which by its very name connotes an openness to and refuge for new arrivals — is still ​“trying to do things which other people have given up on. We are trying to forge a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-economic community here together, and towns across this state, across this country, have given up on that. But we have not. And I am proud of that. That is why I live here.”

Brennan said his own grandmother ​“was left by herself with four kids across the sea. She came here with them right before my mom was born. She did not think she’d ever see her husband again. She was on her own. That is a history I cannot turn away from. I cannot turn away from it when I think about the immigrants that are coming here today.” (After the debate, Brennan told the Independent that his grandmother was born in Manchester, England to parents from Dundalk, Ireland, and that she was living in Wales when she and her children immigrated to the U.S.)

“We need to have opportunities for all people,” Brennan stressed. ​“It is not a question of whether or not we should serve our residents or whether or not we should serve immigrants. It’s a question of providing opportunities for everyone.”

And to do that, he said, city government needs to have ​“strong community partnerships” with social service providers and ​“community groups” so that, if a bus of immigrants does arrive in New Haven, ​“we will be able to activate those partnerships and deal with it better than other communities do around the country.”

“And if you have a culture that is accepting,” he added, ​“that is open and that treasures and fosters diversity, we will be able to deal with it better than those other cities across the country.”

Brennan concluded by returning to the issue that has been at the center of his campaign all year: the need to create more housing.

“And if we are active on attacking the housing affordability crisis that we have in this city, we will have more home and affordability for people, whoever they are and wherever they come from,” he said. ​“I want housing affordability for our residents … but when we have it for residents, we have it for all.” 

Unlike when Abdussabur’s response was greeted with intermittent applause from the crowd, Brennan’s received a less welcoming reception. At least one attendee, Brother Born, booed (and was then chastised by the moderators and told not to boo in response to candidates’ answers.)

Goldenberg: "I Would Go To The State"

“I think all people deserve to be respected, and as mayor, that is how I would treat every member of this community,” Goldenberg opened his response.

Then, like Abdussabur and Brennan before him, he dived into personal history.

“My grandmother escaped persecution in Ukraine,” he said. She had to ​“hide under the ground during the daytime and travel at night so that she could get from Ukraine” to Paris before emigrating to the U.S.

“I have a lot of respect for anyone who escaped persecution, refugees,” he continued. ​“I think there are a lot of organizations that do a lot of great work” working with those very new arrivals.

But; ​“We as a city cannot solve problems that are so much larger than just this city,” Goldenberg said. ​“With immigration, that is something that we can’t take all the state’s problems and pay form them with the under-resources that we already have. We need the state to come in and help us with some of these issues.”

Same goes for ensuring that enough housing is built in New Haven and in the region, he said. State government needs to play a key role in fostering such development. 

In short, he said, faced with the hypothetical bus of immigrants at the center of Jackson’s question, Goldenberg said, ​“I would go to the state.”

Elicker: "We've Planned For This"

The last to get a shot at answering Jackson’s question, Mayor Elicker tapped into both Brennan’s commitment to welcoming immigrants and working with community groups as well as Goldenberg’s insistence that the city needs to rely on state help. He also revealed that his administration has, just in case, been planning for just such a scenario described by Jackson’s question.

“I think we should welcome everyone,” Elicker said. ​“I think that makes us better as a city. I think the recipe of New Haven welcoming everyone works. We’ve seen so many people love our city, move into our city, because they cherish the diversity that makes us all stronger. I don’t think it should be us vs. them.”

That said, he told the crowd that his administration has met ​“multiple times to plan for this scenario with the governor’s office there, with the Red Cross there, with Junta there, with IRIS there. And we have played out where a bus might be likely to drop people off, and what happens” next.

In such a scenario, he said, his administration has thought through who should be at the bus drop-off site ​“welcoming people,” who would go on the bus and be able to communicate ​“in the languages we’re quite confident people will be speaking, not just Spanish.”

They’ve talked through how such a city government-appointed group would give these new arrivals ​“directions, explain to them that we are a sanctuary city and that they should not be afraid of the police. We would transfer them to a welcoming center, which we have designated as 200 Orange, and that will be a staging area for people as they get processed in and collect their info, understand if they have medical needs, if they have family needs.”

Elicker said the state government and the governor’s office in particular has ​“played a real leadership role” in planning for this scenario. The state has said to give them ​“24 hours maximum” and the it ​“will identify places not in New Haven but in the whole region that can help house people in the long term.”

“We’ve planned for this because we think that it is highly possible that it may happen,” Elicker said. ​“And we’ve worked collaboratively with partners to ensure that, if it does, we can be proud of how New Haven responds.”

Click on the video below to watch Thursday’s Democratic mayoral forum in full.