ICE Arrested Cross Teen In Workplace Raid, Sent Him South; 150 Rally For His Return

By Laura Glesby, Maya McFadden and Sonia Ahmed, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Eleven teens stood chained together, side by side before a 150-person crowd, their hands zip-tied and painted red like blood.

They were there to demonstrate solidarity with their classmate, Esdrás R., an 18-year-old rising Wilbur Cross High School junior whom ICE detained in a workplace raid in Southington last week — and whom they learned had been transferred to a detention center in Louisiana as of Wednesday morning.

The students stood, chained together, for a three-minute moment of silence outside Wilbur Cross on Wednesday afternoon, at the conclusion of a rally that garnered more than 100 supporters calling for the release of Esdrás and other ICE detainees.

“What do we want? Bring Esdrás home!” the protesters chanted. “When do we want it? Now!”

The protest unfolded hours after a lawyer representing Esdrás was able to communicate with the 18-year-old high schooler for the first time, according to CT Students For a Dream Director Tabitha Sookdeo.

The lawyer learned that Esdrás has been transferred to the Alexandria Staging Facility, a massive immigrant detention center in Alexandria, Louisiana. The detention center is connected to one of ICE Air Operations’ five main airports, out of which federal immigration officials have been flying deportation flights out of the country. It’s a site where Avelo, a budget airline that maintains a base out of New Haven’s Tweed airport and that has contracted with the Department of Homeland Security to operate deportation flights, has operated planes on behalf of ICE.

Upon hearing of Esdrás’ new whereabouts, “all our stomachs dropped,” said Sookdeo.

Meanwhile, ICE officials revealed in a statement on Wednesday that Esdrás was detained not due to a targeted arrest warrant, but in a raid of a workplace in Southington. Two days after the Independent first requested comment from ICE on why and where Esdras was arrested, the agency provided at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday a statement attributed to Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

That statement asserts that Esdras — whose first name McLaughin spelled as “Edras” — was arrested as part of a “worksite site enforcement operation” on June 25. “This illegal alien entered the country as an unaccompanied minor under the Biden Administration and was released into the country,” McLaughlin said about Esdrás. “He has been placed in immigration proceedings.”

ICE Boston spokesperson James Covington subsequently told the Independent that DHS had mistyped the arrest date in the original comment, and that Esdras was arrested on July 21, not June 25.

Covington also subsequently stated that the arrest took place in Southington, but declined to identify the workplace due to the “enforcement operation” being part of an “ongoing operation.”

As Esdras’ legal team fights behind the scenes for his release, a crowd of protesters — including many students and educators from New Haven Public Schools — gathered on Wednesday to call for action.

Among the crowd were a host of city, state, and federal politicians (or their representatives), including State Sen. Gary Winfield, Alders Caroline Tanbee Smith and Ellen Cupo, and representatives of Mayor Justin Elicker, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who each released statements of support for Esdras’ return.

When 2025 Cross graduate and former Board of Education student representative John Carlos Serana Musser took the microphone Wednesday, he first reminded the crowd that he is the proud son of an immigrant New Haven educator.

He then went on to recall his experience of attending Wilbur Cross, as he stood outside the school. As a student, Serana Musser joined forces with his peers, educators, and community organizations to rally on several occasions for safe and equitable school building conditions for students and staff.

Despite his critiques of Cross and New Haven Public School buildings, Serana Musser said New Haven’s district and particularly Cross “ha[ve] an aspect of education that is incredibly special. Something, in fact, that these richer districts we always talk of, cannot buy.”

That special factor present in NHPS is diversity, Serana Musser told Wednesday’s crowd.

“When I walked the halls of WIlbur Cross, when I played on the soccer team, the chess club, or led student council meetings, I always noticed how these places were effortlessly diverse. How in a room, six or more languages can be spoken.”

During his high school career, Serana Musser said the best parts of the education he received came from the patience, endurance, and empathy he learned while in diverse classrooms that prepared him to grow from others’ stories and experiences.

“Diversity is the education of humanity and community. When I go into the world, I know the only places that are worth being in are the ones I will find conflicting ideas, interests, and people. I know that Wilbur Cross has prepared me for that.

“Students like Esdrás are not the problem. They repeat a story that is essential to the history of the formation of the United States. Coming to a new land for new opportunities. Leaving behind persecution, poverty, and starvation in their motherland. Are today’s immigrants any different from the Puritans, the Italians, the Germans? Why are we criminalizing institutional fear out of the American story?” Serana Musser said.

Other students who attended Wednesday’s rally reflected on a question raised by local pastor Josh Williams of Elm City Vineyard Church, asking the crowd to remember what it was like when they were teenagers going into their junior year of high school.

Serana Musser said he would be terrified, being stripped of communication and connection from his parents and being treated as less than human.

Ambar Santiago-Rojas, a member of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition and a student at Engineering and Science University Magnet School in West Haven, addressed the crowd Wednesday with a call to action for the New Haven community.

“Stop saying you stand in solidarity with those under attack but only share a post on your Facebook or Instagram story!” she declared. “A high school student who is in bars simply because of the color of his skin should not be normalized.”

She added that as a student and daughter of immigrants, it’s hard to focus when she thinks of Esdrás.

Shortly after, there was a demonstration led by students. The students were zip tied together with chains, had red paint on their hands and their heads were down with masks on their faces. Some held signs reading “Hands off our immigrant students” and “Bring Esdrás home”.

A chant followed: “Bring Esdrás home!”

Santiago-Rojas, who helped organize the demonstration, said she was inspired by a group of artists in Los Angeles who did something similar, with chains and demonstrators in ICE costumes.

“It’s inhumane,” she said regarding Esdrás’ story. Santiago-Rojas added that the community needs to band together, and organizations like the New Haven Immigrants Coalition need more people so that they’re able to do more for the community.

Board of Education student representative and High School in the Community rising senior Jonaily Colón also joined Wednesday’s student action. With zip-tied wrists and chains around their waists, Colón said she feared even the brief minutes of vulnerability when she was inspected with nowhere to go among Wednesday’s crowd.

Recent Career High School grad and first-year UCONN student Adlin Rizal also joined the student action with friend Cara Wilson, a first-year student at Rutgers University. They agreed that it was empowering to be a part of something, despite not knowing they would do so ahead of time.

“He is just like us. Cared about his grades, had friends, and worked,” Rizal said.

Rizal added that during her junior year, she was worried about grades and SATs.

“This made the situation so much more real, and I’m scared for him and everyone,” Wilson said.

Meanwhile, in separate press releases sent out Wednesday, DeLauro and Blumenthal inveighed against Esdras’ detention.

“Esdras is not a threat. He worked a job. He went to school. He helped his classmates. And now, because of President Trump’s cruel and chaotic policy, he sits in detention — separated from his family, his education, and his friends,” DeLauro is quoted as saying.

“What is happening to Esdras is unacceptable. We need to know where he is and we must ensure his due process rights are fully respected. We need an immigration system that works for America.”

DeLauro also described the Trump administration as “not laser-focused on deporting violent criminals,” but instead “targeting and removing people who make our community stronger, like Esdras, a student and friend to so many.” That kind of immigration enforcement is “shameful and cruel.”

Blumenthal agreed. “ICE’s arrest of another Connecticut high school student at his place of employment is cruel, craven and coldhearted. Esdras should be preparing to start his junior year at Wilbur Cross High School in a few weeks, not in a detention center. Esdras, I want you to know we are fighting for you, and we will not stop until you are home.”

Wilbur Cross teachers have taken to writing testimonials in support of Esdras, describing what he was like in their classrooms.

As of Wednesday afternoon, an online fundraiser called “Free Esdrás!” and seeking to raise $10,000 to support “community organizing, legal fees, and basic needs of detained community members” had already surpassed its goal.

Thomas Breen contributed to this report.

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