There have been sightings, in real life and online, about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) being in Stratford to, effectively, do their jobs. Jobs that disrupt, scare, and create an uneasiness that brings to Stratford what we’ve been seeing on the news, happening in places like New York, Massachusetts, and California. And it’s frightening.
What we read about and see on the news is meant to inform us, but should also prompt us to dig a little deeper to better understand local and global issues like immigration, and also, I hope, to better understand the job of ICE.
Two years after the towers fell on September 11, 2001, there was a merger between the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, giving us what we have today – ICE. They are an agency of the federal government , charged with protecting America by conducting criminal investigations and adhering to immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.
In the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report in 2024, it is estimated 53,610 people call our Stratford community home. And approximately, 20% of the over 53,000 people identify as Hispanic. As a Stratford resident myself, a mother, and a writer, I am eager to hear from our Hispanic community members, and their feelings on the recent ICE raids.
Just this past June, 2025, there was a rumor that ICE officials were at the graduation ceremonies of both Stratford and Bunnell High Schools. This most certainly forces us to confront, in a very real way, what we’ve seen and heard in the news. To confirm this rumor, I spoke with Deputy Chief Paul DosSantos, who said, “I have no knowledge of ICE ever being in Stratford. I have never seen ICE in Stratford. It is a rumor.”
We’ve seen it, watched it, heard about it, and for some, lived through it. The “it” being the loss of family members because of the deportation process of immigrants, or “illegals” as people have been labeled who have emigrated to the United States. The word itself creates fear, a word that scares people who are from minority groups, and a word that tends to put people on alert.
The numbers themselves are cause for alarm. By the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30th, 2024, the number of immigrants who were deported under former President Biden was 271,484 people. Since President Trump took office in January, 2025, the Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin of the Department of Homeland Security told TIME that more than 207,000 people have been deported – in 6 months.
If we roll the clock back quite a bit, to 2017, when the Obama Administration spent their final term in office, it was reported that during his eight-year tenure between 2009-2017, 3 million people were deported. Depending on which source you read, some say he did so without due process and others say it was with due process. No matter which way, folks were deported under President Obama – we didn’t hear about it as much as we are hearing about President Trump’s.
The question begs to be asked – why didn’t we hear about the deportations of immigrants under President Obama?
A lesson that we often hear parents teaching their kids is this: it’s what we do and how we do it that matters most. If only for a moment, we can take a step back and look at how ICE is working to achieve their mission, and we all should ring the alarm.
Nikkya Hargrove is a mom, wife, author, and owner of Stratford’s only bookstore. She enjoys cooking dinner for her family, binge watching (any) television show with her wife, and spending time experiencing life with her family and dogs.
