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We go to Danbury, Connecticut, where residents held a mass demonstration this week to protest recent immigration arrests and to support the city’s immigrant community. Danbury, like many other communities across the United States, has been the target of a spike in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, including local reports of ICE arresting parents at school bus stops.

“We really have been describing it as the administration terrorizing our city, because that is what it felt like. The streets were empty. Kids stayed home from practice. Kids stayed home from school,” says Juliana Soares, the lead organizer for Danbury Unites for Immigrants. “Masked agents often would shut down the street to just abduct people. … They just do a gross display of force and intimidation in a grocery store parking lot, where they’re just walking around, kind of hunting their next target.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

More than a thousand people rallied in Danbury, Connecticut, Wednesday night to protest recent immigration arrests in Connecticut. There have been roughly 100 ICE arrests of immigrants in recent weeks, more than half in the city of Danbury. At least 60 businesses in the city also closed their doors for “A Day Without Immigrants” in support of the city’s immigrant community. Among the arrests, local officials reported parents were picked up when they brought their children to school bus stops. The kids went into the bus, and then the parents were taken by ICE.

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This is Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy last week.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: There has been an obscene uptick in arrests here in Danbury. In particular, this morning, there was a hunting of families happening at school bus stops, in which ICE apparently waited for kids to board the bus, and then picked up the parents, just to intentionally terrorize the kids, so that when they get off the bus, their parents are gone, in detention, feeling traumatized, alone, scared to death. This has to stop.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: There has been an obscene uptick in arrests here in Danbury. In particular, this morning, there was a hunting of families happening at school bus stops, in which ICE apparently waited for kids to board the bus, and then picked up the parents, just to intentionally terrorize the kids, so that when they get off the bus, their parents are gone, in detention, feeling traumatized, alone, scared to death. This has to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: CNN’s Dana Bash asked so-called border czar Tom Homan about the bus stop arrests.

DANA BASH: Are ICE officers detaining parents at school bus stops? TOM HOMAN: ICE isn’t in the business of terrorizing children. That’s — that’s — that’s just — that’s just political fire. ICE is out there enforcing law that was enacted by Congress.

DANA BASH: Are ICE officers detaining parents at school bus stops?

TOM HOMAN: ICE isn’t in the........

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