ICE Arrests SCSU Athlete At Tweed

By Paul Bass, Thomas Breen and Dereen Shirnekhi, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Federal immigration agents arrested a Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) basketball player at Tweed New Haven Airport on Friday — as ICE has established an authorized presence at the Morris Cove regional airport.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson confirmed that arrest in an email comment sent to the Independent on Tuesday.

“On September 4, at the Tweed New Haven Airport, ICE arrested Deng Deng, an illegal alien from South Sudan,” the DHS spokesperson wrote. “He legally entered the U.S. and illegally overstayed, violating the immigration laws of our country. All of his claims will be heard by an immigration judge and he will receive due process. This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”

A photo provided to the Independent shows that Deng was arrested while wearing a grey, long-sleeved Southern Connecticut State University shirt. Deng’s Instagram account and an article on NJ Hoops indicate that Deng attended high school in New Jersey before starting at SCSU this year. His Facebook account indicates that he is originally from the city of Aweil in South Sudan.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) online detainee locator, meanwhile, shows that Deng is currently being held at the Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island.

Federal court records also show that Deng, represented by local attorneys Glenn Formica and Steven Strom, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on Friday. On that same day, U.S. Judge Vernon Oliver issued an order preventing Deng from being transferred to any ICE detention facility beyond 150 miles of the Connecticut border. Deng’s case was then transferred from the District of Connecticut to the District of Massachusetts on Wednesday.

All of this comes as ICE agents now have access credentials to a part of the airport parking lot reserved for law enforcement.

An Avports spokesperson told the Independent that the airport followed federal law in giving agents access credentials. He cited Section 49 CFR § 1542.209(m)(1), which states that “airport operators ‘must authorize’ unescorted access for qualifying government employees, including law enforcement officers, as long as a background check was part of the employment process. Access and credentialing remain subject to the airport’s TSA-approved security program and other applicable security requirements.”

“Airport credentials document access privileges; federal law establishes an officer’s enforcement authority,” said the spokesperson, who said ICE agents had access to the parking area reserved for law enforcement.

In a separate comment, that same spokesperson wrote, “Tweed-New Haven Airport, like all public-use airports, is subject to federal law enforcement agencies and has no visibility into or influence over enforcement activity.”

Kica Matos, who lives in New Haven and serves as president of the National Immigration Law Center, said the incident revealed that ICE apparently “has unfettered access to the entirety of Tweed Airport, and there is active coordination and complicity between the airport and ICE.” She cited activists’ photos and video of agents wearing Tweed access badges and parking in a staff lot.

“The idea that people are being detained and arrested at the Tweed Airport should be repulsive to anybody who lives in our community. We don’t want ICE here. We want them gone. It’s instilling fear across communities irrespective of immigration status,” Matos said.

Meanwhile, Anne Watkins from the New Haven Immigrants Coalition told the Independent that two community members were detained at Tweed and one at Hartford’s Bradley Airport last week.

“New Haven immigrants and others are in solidarity with Deng Deng,” Watkins said. “They [ICE] are actively at Tweed. They are parking in the Tweed parking lots, sometimes in illegal parking spaces. They have applied for and received Tweed badges. We are curious about what decisions Tweed is making to give them the kind of access that they have.”

Watkins also said that federal agents “were aggressive with legal observers and rapid responders,” and that the New Haven Police Department “threatened to cite legal observers on the ground who were trying to ensure the protection of the constitutional rights of the residents who were detained.”

“Every place, every public place is a hunting ground for ICE,” Unidad Latina en Accion lead organizer John Lugo told the Independent on Wednesday. “They’re going to increase their presence, we need to be aware about that, and we need to be careful as a community.”

Deng’s arrest comes amid a surge in ICE detentions across Connecticut and the country in recent weeks, including at airports. It also comes several months after ICE made an off-campus arrest of a SCSU nursing student on March 31. That arrest prompted a campus rally, a GoFundMe fundraiser, and concerted efforts by local activists and lawyers to secure her release on bond in May.

A SCSU spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.