Connecticut City Opens Police Ranks to Noncitizens After ICE Sweeps
In a vote of 18-2 on September 3, the City Council of Danbury, Connecticut, approved allowing noncitizens to become police officers.
Seventeen Democrats and one Republican backed the measure; two Republicans voted no. The change amends a local ordinance to match a standard the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) adopted in 2020. At that time, POST dropped the U.S.-citizenship requirement for law-enforcement hiring statewide. It extended eligibility to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in 2025. City officials say more than 30 Connecticut municipalities already follow the same standard.
The vote came roughly a week after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a series of operations in the Danbury area that led to more than 60 arrests. Reports vary on the precise figure, with some outlets citing around 100 people detained, of whom local officials said only six or seven had criminal records. Mayor Roberto Alves, a Democrat, said the raids caused widespread fear, with school attendance dropping by roughly 700 students and residents avoiding stores and work.
Favoring Immigrants
About the September 3 vote, City Council member Joe Britton said it “sends a message to our immigrant community at large that you are welcome in Danbury.” President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan pushed back on that framing, saying “ICE has no intention of terrorizing children,” and calling Democrats’ characterization “a political statement … to enrage the American people.”
Notably, Mayor Alves has said he himself entered the United States without legal status as a child. He did not obtain citizenship until 2017, before later winning local office, a biographical detail he has spoken about publicly in connection with his support for the policy.
City spokesman Taylor O’Brien and Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour both emphasized that hiring standards themselves remain unchanged: Every applicant, citizen or not, must still pass the same background investigation, psychological evaluation, physical-fitness testing, civil-service exam, and academy training.
Officials have not published data on how many noncitizens have applied for or been hired into police jobs in the Connecticut towns that have adopted the policy since 2020.
Self-governance: Americans Governing Americans
Regardless, the American experiment was based on the concept of self-governance (i.e., Americans governing Americans, not foreigners governing Americans). One formulation represents freedom; the other, tyranny. The fact that a mayor who entered the country illegally is now obstructing immigration enforcement and creating a passive-aggressive atmosphere to abrogate the rule of law is an example of the lunatics being allowed to run the asylum. Or, in this case, the lawless being allowed to run law enforcement.
The insult that this represents to the American people goes beyond what even conquering nations impose when they set up a new government in a vanquished country. When the Germans, for instance, took over France in World War II, they did not permit German citizens to police the French populace. The French constabulary was kept French, even under a time of political occupation.
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