Thomas Breen photo
Schools Supt. Madeline Negrón: “I am ready to stand and fight for the education that every child deserves … regardless of their immigration status.”
Retraining city employees on the “welcoming city” executive order. Confirming public school students’ emergency contact information. Securing federal grant money in contracts as soon as possible, before it can be revoked.
Those are some ways that New Haven officials are preparing — not panicking — ahead of an anticipated immigration crackdown promised by the incoming president.
Mayor Justin Elicker, Schools Supt. Madeline Negrón, and Police Chief Karl Jacobson conveyed that message to over 50 immigrant advocates at a town hall hosted by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) on Thursday evening.
They were joined by IRIS immigration lawyers Rachel Doft and Michael Doyle at United Church on the Green. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong spoke toward the end of the event as well.
At the heart of the dialogue was the question of how the city is preparing for the potential mass deportations promised by Donald Trump ahead of his second presidential term. During his campaign, Trump pledged to carry out deportations on a historic scale to force up to 20 million people out of the country.
One theme of the city officials’ remarks was that leaning into fear can itself damage immigrants’ safety and quality of life.
“It’s hard for us to know what will happen. It’s important for us to go about our daily business as much as possible,” Elicker said. Places of communal gathering and neighbor-to-neighbor interactions are important, he said: “That’s where we’re strong as well.”
The city officials sought to send a message that it is safe to go to school, seek medical care, and contact emergency services.
“We are going to be protecting every single child that walks through our doors,” said Negrón. “I am ready to stand and fight for the education that every child deserves … regardless of their immigration status.”
Over the course of two hours, officials responded to a series of audience questions, which are paraphrased below.
Mayor Justin Elicker: "There will be an intentional push to divide our values."
What is New Haven’s current policy about supporting federal immigration enforcement?
New Haven currently has both a “Welcoming City” executive order for all government employees and a general order specific to the police that limit how public officials can aid immigration enforcement.
Both policies prohibit police and other local government employees from:
• Arresting or detaining anyone based on their immigration status.
• Asking individuals about their immigration status.
• Disclosing a person’s immigration status to agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Essentially, local government officials aren’t allowed to assist or participate in federal immigration enforcement.
There are exceptions: As outlined in the Welcoming City Order, public employees can disclose immigration status without consent when it’s “required by law,” when doing so is “necessary” to “apprehend” someone suspected of committing a crime unrelated to their immigration status, or when it’s “necessary” for “criminal investigation of potential terrorism.”
“We’re not doing any raids that are purely related to just immigration,” Jacobson said of the police.
Elicker, Negrón, and Jacobson said that all employees under their respective purviews are being trained again on the implications of these policies.
They also argued that these policies are critical to fostering safety in New Haven.
“If we didn’t have our general orders saying we don’t do roundups or work with ICE, then people wouldn’t report crimes to us,” Jacobson.
Will these local policies last in the long-term?
When asked about the city’s longer-term worries, Elicker responded, “One of the bigger concerns I have is the interest in cutting off funding to cities like ours” — cities that refuse to collaborate with ICE.
“We receive a lot of federal funding,” Elicker said. Funding that affects schools through Title I, housing, and non-profits, including many homelessness services.
For now, according to Elicker, the city is working to contractually obligate as much funding from federal grants as possible before that funding can be threatened.
“Frankly, as a community, we’re gonna have to make some difficult decisions,” Elicker said. “There will be an intentional push to divide our values. That will be something we have to go through together. And I suspect there will be a lot of sacrifice there.”
Can city employees or police stop immigration raids, or warn communities beforehand?
“Our police department is not going to stop the federal government… who is legally able to conduct their business,” said Elicker.
“We can’t interfere with the federal government’s law enforcement activities,” Jacobson said. “We’re not going to assist them, but we’re not going to interfere with them either.”
“If I was to warn them, you’d have to bond me out of federal prison,” he added. “Same with the mayor.”
What happens if civilians protest immigration raids?
“It’s not our practice to arrest protesters,” said Jacobson, noting that “we’ve had hundreds of protests” this year and “one arrest.”
(Update: There have been numerous arrests of protesters in New Haven this year, mostly by the Yale Police Department and the Metropolitan Transit Authority police. New Haven Police did arrest seven activists at a homeless rights’ protest in October. Jacobson apologized for the misstatement on Monday, noting, “I was thinking of street-closing protests.”)
He’s going to keep that up “the best that I can — until me and the mayor end up in jail,” he said with a half laugh.
Will New Haven schools, churches, and hospitals still be safe spaces?
For now, the officials stressed, the answer is yes.
“We’ve been doing really well in getting kids to come to school,” Negrón said as she made her way out. “Listen: send your kids. We’re gonna keep them safe.”
Currently, schools — as well as healthcare settings, religious institutions, rallies, and providers of social services — are areas that ICE policy deems to be “protected.”
However, Trump has declared that he would appoint Tom Homan to helm immigration enforcement efforts. Homan co-authored the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto, which calls for an end to blanket protections covering those spaces. So under a second Trump administration, it’s possible that ICE could someday be allowed to raid those community and healthcare settings.
“It’s hard to know if that’s something that will actually happen, but we’re having discussions about that,” said Elicker.
The school system is preparing for the future possibility that immigration officials could come into school buildings, Negrón said.
If such a situation were to occur, she said, the school system would have a protocol for how educators should respond. “We don’t interfere, but we run that balance of trying to shield, as much as we can, our students.”
“As educators, we’re always very creative,” Negrón said. “We’re just gonna have to be more creative.”
How is the school system addressing students’ fears related to immigration enforcement?
“We have children that showed up in our schools the day after the election and expressed fear,” Negrón said.
How are educators responding to that fear? “We are doing it in a way that is developmentally appropriate: [helping students] to understand what is happening around the world, what they might be facing,” Negrón said.
“We are going to our experts: our social workers and our counselors,” she said — drawing guidance from both internal school employees and outside organizations.
“The priority here,” Negrón said, “is equipping every single staff person who we have now inside of our New Haven Public Schools to ensure that they feel like they have the right tools to engage in this work.”
One practical step the school system is taking to prepare for a potential spike in deportations is confirming and updating every student’s emergency contact information.
Negrón noted that student data is protected under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prevents students’ personal educational records from being disclosed.
Negrón additionally urged families to make emergency plans. “Prepare for the worst,” she said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
What about the rest of the state?
According to all three officials, the city has been in active communication with some other municipalities as well as local community groups in order to brainstorm and prepare for changing immigration policy.
“Coalition building is important,” said Elicker. “That’s the work we do to defend ourselves later on.”
While Attorney General Tong refused to go into detail about particular plans for his office’s response to the Trump Administration, he stressed that he and his counterparts in other states “have been preparing for some time. We’ve thought about all the various contingencies.”