ICE-Detained SCSU Student Granted Bond

by Dereen Shirnekhi and Thomas Breen

Tabitha Sookdeo: “Let’s bring her home.”

A statewide immigrant-advocacy group interrupted their Great Give fundraising Thursday with an urgent request — after a Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) nursing student detained by ICE was newly granted a $15,000 bond.

CT Students for a Dream Executive Director Tabitha Sookdeo sent out that “Urgent Action” email at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Thursday’s fundraising pivot by CT Students for a Dream concerns Keyla Vasquez-Zuniga, an SCSU student from Ecuador who was detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Tuesday, March 31, outside of a state courthouse in Middletown.

“We are pausing our Great Give campaign because there is something more urgent,” Sookdeo wrote on Thursday.

“Keyla, detained Southern Connecticut State University nursing student, has been granted bond, and she is only $6,387 away from being released from a detention center in Louisiana. 

“You showed up for her. And because of that, Keyla has an opportunity to come back to Connecticut, where she belongs.”

Sookdeo wrote that CT Students for a Dream is trying to raise $20,000 to help pay her bond, cover her legal fees, and pay for transportation back to Connecticut.

“Keyla is counting on us to close the gap,” Sookdeo wrote. “Please give today and share this message. Let’s bring her home.”

She included a link to this GoFundMe fundraising page, which, as of 5:11 p.m., showed that $9,581 had been raised towards a $20,000 goal.

“We thought it was more important to pause [Great Give fundraising] and make sure we can bring Keyla back home,” Sookdeo said in a phone interview with the Independent on Thursday.

Sookdeo said that an immigration judge granted Vasquez-Zuniga a $15,000 bond at a hearing on Tuesday.

Vasquez-Zuniga is being represented pro bono by the American Immigrant Legal Clinic, a new initiative by CT Students for a Dream that brings together lawyers across the state to provide free services for immigrants.

While she has not personally spoken to Vasquez-Zuniga, Sookdeo said she has been in contact with the student’s family, who she said “miss her, and want to see her desperately.”

Last month, an anonymous Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told the Independent that Vasquez-Zuniga entered the United States legally on Oct. 24, 2021, under a tourist visa that allowed her to stay in the U.S. for six months. “She illegally remained in the United States for nearly three years in violation of U.S. law. She will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”

The DHS spokesperson also said that ICE arrested Vasquez-Zuniga “during operations” in Middletown. They identified Vasquez-Zuniga as a “criminal illegal alien from Ecuador” and said that she has previously been arrested for first-degree criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct. Connecticut’s online court database, however, shows no criminal convictions or pending charges associated with her name.

While the ICE arrest on March 31 took place off campus, more than 100 students, teachers, and immigrant rights advocates rallied on SCSU’s campus on April 6 to call for her release.

And in an April 7 email statement, New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney and State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff decried ICE’s courthouse arrest of Vasquez-Zuniga as “another terrifying example of the Trump regime weaponizing federal powers to incite fear in our state.”

Vasquez-Zuniga was initially detained at the Strafford County Corrections center in New Hampshire. ICE’s online detainee locator states that she is currently being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, La.