Pressure Mounts To House Refugee Kids

As New Haven’s mayor consulted her counterparts in other cities on a potential plan to house thousands of immigrant children, activists scheduled a rally by a building they say could handle the job.

Those were the latest developments in an issue that has gathered steam statewide since Gov. Dannel P. Malloy decided last week to turn down a federal request to house 2,000 undocumented children at the old Southbury training school (as originally reported by the CT Mirror). Malloy argued that the training school is in too poor repair to house so many children; he also argued that warehousing them in one facility is a bad idea.

The feds turned to the state for help with handling an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied children, 57,000 since October, across the southwestern border of the United States. Many are fleeing deadly gangs or traffickers in their Latin American homelands. Their arrival has presented the government with a humanitarian crisis. The federal Department of Health and Human Services is looking to send contracts of between $500,000 and $100 million to the states to help out.

Activists immediately denounced Malloy’s decision as heartless election-year pandering. So did a Sunday Register editorial. New Haven state Rep. Juan Candelaria, who chairs the legislature’s Black and Hispanic Caucus, issued a letter calling for the administration to reconsider. ​“The State of Connecticut simply does not own appropriate facilities that can accommodate these needs,” the Malloy administration wrote back.

On Monday Candelaria told the Independent that numerous churches have offered to house some of the children with individual families. Malloy has also directed his social-services chief to see whether any of the children currently in overcrowded federal facilities have relatives in Connecticut with whom they can stay.

“Other families are willing to help those children,” Candelaria said (pictured). ​“I think we should be helpful as best as we can. It’s the humanitarian thing to do. These children are here. We have to deal with the situation.”

Meanwhile, Harp administration officials, led by human services chief Martha Okafor and Chief of Staff Tomas Reyes, have been exploring possible buildings that could house some of the children here. Harp is also phoning fellow mayors to discuss suggesting a number of sites to the governor as alternatives to the training school, according to Reyes.

“The mayor is calling other big-city mayors who have a large immigrant community to see if we can figure out something that the city can do and then talk to the governor,” Reyes said. ​“I think the mayor believes that the governor was not saying no to helping the immigrants. He was saying no to the Southbury facility.”

The issue has presented a possible political bind for New Haven’s elected officials: They have a close relationship with Malloy, who needs another huge victory margin in New Haven this fall to win a second term in office. At the same time, New Haven is the epicenter of a well-organized activist movement that has produced groundbreaking immigration-reform policy both in the city and statewide.

Those activists are planning a 4 p.m. rally Tuesday at 60 Sargent Dr. calling on the governor to return to the feds with an offer to use other buildings in the state to house the 2,000 children if the Southbury facility doesn’t work.

Organizer John Jairo Lugo of Unidad Latina en Accion said the group chose the Sargent Drive spot to point out that the former Gateway Community College campus there sits empty. Gateway moved out of the 150,000 square-foot facility (pictured), which is far bigger than the 90,000-square-foot Southbury facility, to relocate downtown. Southern Connecticut State University recently took ownership of the building; it has not announced plans for it.

“We’re concentrating on Malloy — we think this was politics. This is a game,” Lugo said. ​“We’re not concentrating on New Haven. We’re doing it in New Haven because we want to prove to Malloy that there are a lot of empty buildings in Connecticut. The former Gateway Community College is empty. There are places in Hartford. There are places in Bridgeport. That building is evidence that there are enough buildings in Connecticut.”

Mayoral Chief of Staff Reyes said he hadn’t heard the suggestion of the former Gateway campus. Some have suggested using the old Goffe Street armory, but that probably would require too much repair work to get up to code, he said. (“We ought not to be putting young children [in buildings] that are not up to code, that are not habitable for humans.”) Another suggestion has been the former Job Corps building on Wintergreen Avenue.