Credit: Elisa Broche photo Posted inImmigrants

by Thomas Breen The New Haven independent

Elisa Broche was waiting for the bus on Elm Street Thursday morning when she heard someone shout, “Oh my God, they’re taking him from the courthouse!”

She turned around and, right before her bus arrived, took one photo — of a half-dozen men wearing “Police” and “Police HSI” vests, some obscuring their faces with balaclavas, ushering a handcuffed man into a black car.

Broche is a University of New Haven (UNH) student who also works for Yale New Haven Hospital taking photos of newborns.

She told the Independent Thursday that she was traveling home at around 11:20 a.m., waiting for the 212 bus, and facing south towards the New Haven Green, when a shout caused her to turn, lift her camera, and take a single photo of what was happening on the sidewalk outside of the state courthouse at 121 Elm St.

“It was very quick,” she recalled. The bus pulled up right after. “They were taking him already,” she said about the federal agents across the street from her. Whoever was arrested “was put in a black van.”

The photo Broche took shows at least six man — all wearing vests, some emblazoned with the word “POLICE,” some with “POLICE HSI,” a reference to Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. At least two, potentially four, of those agents are wearing coverings that hide their faces. The detained man is wearing khaki pants and a collared shirt, and is facing away from the camera.

The federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE agencies did not respond to a request for comment — including questions about who the detained man is and why he was arrested — by the publication time of this article. John Lugo, a lead organizer with the local immigrant and worker rights group Unidad Latina en Acción, said he too had heard that someone had been detained outside the courthouse Thursday, but he does not know who the arrestee is.

This isn’t the first time federal immigration agents have seized a New Havener on their way to or from a hearing at state court, an action that advocates warn will discourage immigrants from showing up to court altogether.

Broche also doesn’t know the name or identity of that man she photographed while waiting for the bus Thursday.

“Just seeing it happen was terrifying and just broke my heart,” said Broche, who is also an immigrant from Honduras. It “made me feel grateful and lucky, having my status” and permission to be in this country. “Wow,” she thought to herself about what she happened to witness. “Horrifying.”