HARTFORD, Conn. — After a week of raids by federal agents, the Danbury City Council voted overwhelmingly to allow some immigrants without citizenship to apply for jobs as city police officers.

The council members said they wanted to send a message and acted quickly to approve the measure by a vote of 18-2 after agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested and detained numerous residents in Danbury, Stamford, and Bridgeport.

The ordinance will allow permanent legal residents and DACA recipients, who are also known as Dreamers, to apply for law enforcement jobs in the city.

“The standards do not change,” said Joe Britton, a Democratic council member who supported the change. “Same rigorous background check. Same training. Same qualifications. Same oath to protect and serve. In the Army, I learned quickly your background doesn’t matter when you put on the uniform. Same team. Same mission. I believe the same applies to our police.”

Britton wrote on Facebook and also spoke in favor of the measure at the city council meeting.

“It’s legal. It’s allowed,” Britton told his fellow council members. “It’s been recommended. … I do think it’s timely, and this vote sends a message to our immigrant community that you are welcome in Danbury.”

State Rep. Farley Santos, a Democrat from Danbury who came to the United States as a child, felt compelled to address the council on the issue “after hearing some of the abhorrent comments around this issue, and reading even worse online.”

He recounted coming to the U.S., his father teaching him to love and give back to his new home, growing up in Danbury schools and a dream he once had.

“I went to Henry Abbott Technical High School and for a very short moment I wanted to be a police officer. And a guidance counselor that many of you know, Mr. Haddad, sat me down and said ‘Son, you can’t be a police officer. You’re undocumented.’ And there goes a whole life that I had planned out for that short moment,” he said.

Santos said he went on to serve in other ways but discrimination against immigrants like his niece, a DACA recipient who remembers no other home, continues to be unfair.

“The notion that immigrants are inherently bad people because they are immigrants is disgusting, it’s despicable and people who feel that way should be ashamed for themselves,” Santos told the council. “Item number 10 (on the meeting agenda) starts to right the wrongs that past administrations have landed on this city. It starts to tell the immigrants who live in this community, who give back to this community — the same people who are picking up your silverware at the diner, handing your laundry at the drycleaners, the folks who are cutting your grass or building your stone walls because you don’t mind calling them for that — telling them that they belong here too because they built this city, this state, this country, just as much as you have.”

Patrick Ridenhour, the city’s police chief who was the first Black American president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, also addressed the council during public comment to express his support for the measure.

He said he was asked over the past several years by people who had legal status but were not citizens and seemed like otherwise good candidates if they could apply to serve on the police force and he had to tell them no. He later learned that the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, which trains Connecticut police officers, had removed the citizenship requirement in 2020 and extended permission to DACA recipients in 2025.

Rigorous standards, background checks and screenings remain, Ridenhour said.

“So to be clear this is not asking you to lower our hiring standards, it’s just asking you to align our hiring eligibility with our governing body, which is the POST Council,” he said.

The measure was backed by Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves, who was undocumented when he arrived in the United States at the age of 5 and has been a strong supporter of immigrants.

The ICE raids, Britton said, have had a wide-ranging effect on the city, which he saw when he was running through the city’s Rogers Park.

“Not one single person at Rogers Park on the playground,” Britton told council members. “You tell me when was the last time that Rogers Park wasn’t packed on a weeknight in August. I have never seen that.”

Even the immigrants who are legal, he said, are afraid of the raids and have stayed away from public places.

In a similar instance, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Alves toured the downtown businesses on Main Street in Danbury on Monday and found it eerily quiet because immigrants fear that ICE agents will return to make more arrests.

“It’s quieter today, but I don’t think the worst is over because you just don’t know when they’re going to be back,” Alves said outside City Hall.

Following their walking tour, they said the economic impact is obvious because Danbury restaurants and sidewalks were missing the normal hustle and bustle of residents traditionally shopping and going about their daily business. They said they had not yet calculated the economic impact but said it was broad in the downtown area with fewer shoppers and restaurant-goers.

Out of nearly 100 people arrested in Danbury, Bridgeport and Stamford in the past week, officials estimate that only six or seven might have criminal records.

Some students, Alves says, are afraid of going to school as shown by attendance that is down by about 700 in a Danbury public school system of about 12,000 students.

With strong support from President Donald J. Trump, ICE has been able to arrest immigrants across the country with little pushback from the Republican-controlled Congress.

Blumenthal is seeking answers in a letter that he sent to Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of Homeland Security, and David Venturella, the acting director of ICE as he requested a meeting with them regarding the actions in Danbury.

As the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Blumenthal has held forums on the activities of ICE.

“What should have been a time of excitement and community as children in Connecticut return to school has quickly turned into a time of genuine terror,” Blumenthal wrote. “ICE’s actions in Connecticut showcased cruelty and brutality, as well as disregard for the safety and well-being of community members, especially children. They fostered an environment of fear that will undoubtedly impact school attendance rates and the emotional health of students, generally.”

ICE officials have not responded to emailed requests for comment, and the agency has declined to provide details of the arrests and detentions.

But in a televised interview on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union with host Dana Bash, top administration official Tom Homan said ICE agents have been doing their jobs.

“We’re out there to look for illegal aliens with final orders of removal, those who overstay, those who are criminals, and we’re out there looking for them and arresting them,” Homan said. “ICE has no intention of terrorizing children. That is just a political statement, you know, to enrage the American people.”

When Bash asked about Connecticut, Homan said, “Did somebody arrest somebody at a bus stop? I’m not aware of that. … I’m not aware of that incident at all.”

When asked if he will investigate the reports about arrests at a bus stop, Homan responded, “I’ll make an inquiry to the Department of Homeland Security. Yes.”

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