Several Connecticut Republican senators called Tuesday for the resignation of Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias following a statement she posted on the teacher’s union website. The post, in response to the shootings of two civilians in Minneapolis, refers to ICE agents “operating in and around schools, disrupting learning, shattering a sense of safety, and filling families and staff with anxiety.”
“The statement is 100% false, wrong, irresponsible and blatant fear-mongering,” said Republican Sens. Eric Berthel, Heather Somers, Rob Sampson, Henri Martin, Paul Cicarella and Ryan Fazio in a release.
“Where’s the accountability?” the senators said. “She portrays Connecticut schools as unwelcoming places filled with fear because of ICE. There has not been a single incident in a Connecticut school where ICE agents have done any of what she is proclaiming.”
Dias said she found the call for her resignation surprising and disconcerting. She said her statement was in response to the situation in Minnesota and the call for local, state and national leaders to support safe schools was inclusive of Connecticut leaders.
“I think it is ironic that they are calling for my resignation for doing exactly what I am duly elected to do, which is to protect the interest of teachers, public education and students so the disconnect between what they are unhappy with and the actual role that I am elected to serve is a little disconcerting,” Dias said.
Dias said nothing that she said was “lacking in factual basis.
“We all can see on the news the realities of what is going on in (Minneapolis) communities and here in Connecticut we experienced ICE overreach in Danbury, Bridgeport, New Haven, Meriden and I am sure even other communities. The legislature has acknowledged the importance of this issue by voting for the Trust Act.”
The national union National Education Association has reported that teachers in Minnesota have mobilized to care for students and their families during the ICE surge, bringing, food, diapers, schoolwork and more as families shelter in their homes and school attendance plummets.
NEA Today reported that kindergartner Liam Ramos, 5, “is one of four students in Columbia Heights, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, apprehended last week by ICE agents who have been roaming neighborhoods, circling schools, and following the district’s yellow school buses, school officials said.”
During the last legislative session, lawmakers voted to strengthen the Trust Act to maintain independence of state and municipal police. The controversial Connecticut Trust Act blocks local police from making an arrest that is based only on a request by federal agents in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
This past November in a special session, lawmakers also passed legislation limiting what actions U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can take at courthouses and prohibiting state agencies from sharing residents’ personal information.
Berthel, a Watertown Republican, said with the exception of one student who was not on school property that ICE was looking for “there has not been a single incident reported by any police department, by any school district, by anyone about a ICE agent being in or around public schools. That is a blatant lie by the president of the CEA. All that is doing is instilling fear when it is not necessary. We have gone to endless efforts to ensure that students go to school, that they are safe and they are fed. This is irresponsible and blatantly wrong to make a statement like this.”
Berthel said the adjustments made to the Trust Act made it a requirement that an ICE agent has to interact with a coordinator that has been designated by the school they are walking into or that they are approaching.
“They are not allowed to roam the hallways with their masks on and a machine gun and go drag some kid out of a classroom and that is the picture she is painting here and it is wrong and it is irresponsible,” he said.
Sen. Gary Winfield, D- New Haven, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee and vice chair of the Education Committee, who authored the Trust Act, said “every teacher, and every person who impacts our students in Connecticut, should be concerned about their safety and their emotional state.
“Given what’s going on in our country right now, it makes sense for someone whose job it is to educate and protect children to be concerned about what’s going on in Minnesota,” he said. “I appreciate the call to state legislators that we should be thinking in the same direction, and every legislator – Democrat and Republican – should be concerned about the environment that our children are learning in, and we should be making sure that it’s a safe and a healthy environment.”
Rick Green, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection said “ICE does not communicate with us.
“We don’t know any plans or ongoing activities that ICE may or may not have,” he said. “We have no knowledge or awareness of ICE activities in schools in Connecticut.”
Around Connecticut
In Connecticut in the past year, ICE has detained two Connecticut students, one in Meriden and another in New Haven.
This past June a high school student from Meriden was reportedly detained during an immigration hearing in Hartford, according to a school official. He was released after spending six months at a facility in Texas.
And in July an 18-year old Wilbur Cross High School student in New Haven, Esdrás Zabaleta-Ramirez, was arrested by ICE agents while at work at a car wash in Southington. Ramirez came home after a judge ruled in his favor in August, according to his attorney.
Julian Shafer, a history teacher at Danbury High School, said to the CT Mirror this past June that he had watched his students struggle when a family member was forced to leave the country.
“As a teacher of undocumented children, I’ve seen students of mine suffer emotionally, financially and academically because family members of theirs have been deported,” he said to the CT Mirror. “I personally have had students who had to drop out because they had to work to support their family when a parent was deported. They were heartbroken. They wanted nothing more than to stay in school and learn with their peers.”
Dias said “we are seeing the impact of these sort of real threats to our families through attendance participation.
“We know we have families that have children that aren’t going to school because of fear,” she said. “That is not a theory. It is not a hypothetical. I would encourage these legislators to get into their communities and into their schools to actually talk to people because if they do they will be able to see and understand that the comments I made were about us needing to take care of our people and to take care of our communities in the face of all the unrest across the country.”
Maggie Mitchell Salem, director of Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, said she has also learned of lower rates of attendance at schools.
“All immigrants are afraid right now regardless of their status,” she said. “There is a policy memo circulated in May 2025 where ICE can go without a judicial warrant into your home. We are not sure there is any space that they can’t enter right now.”
Dias said she is disappointed that Republicans turned it into a partisan issue.
Reporting by Hartford Courant reporter Christopher Keating is included in this article.