CT Bills Seek ICE Accountability Backed by Tong & Blumenthal

Connecticut’s Judiciary Committee voted Monday along party lines to advance legislation that would let the state sue federal law enforcement agents for civil rights violations and restrict where immigration enforcement can take place. The bill now heads to the full Senate floor.

Attorney General William Tong and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal appeared alongside Democratic legislative leaders at a Hartford press conference before the committee vote, pushing hard for the measures at a moment of intensifying conflict between the state and federal immigration authorities.

Tong framed the legislation not as an expansion of state power but as a restatement of existing legal principles. “We’re just restating what the law is,” he said. “If you break the law of Connecticut, you’ll be held accountable. If you do not have any other law enforcement reason or justification, you’ll be held accountable.”

Senate Bill 397 would give citizens a path to sue federal law enforcement agents for constitutional violations, routed through the attorney general’s office. The bill gained momentum in the wake of the January killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer.

The legal backstory matters here. The 1971 Supreme Court decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics established that individuals could sue federal officials for damages tied to constitutional violations. But the court has not allowed a Bivens suit to proceed in more than three decades, and a 2017 ruling tightened restrictions further. Connecticut’s bill is designed to fill that gap at the state level.

Tong also targeted supervisors and employers, not just officers in the field. “You can’t sit in some cushy office somewhere in Washington, or at a regional office, and order people to do things that get people killed and not be held responsible,” he said. “If you, as a supervisor, encourage people to do things that are against Connecticut law, you can be held liable as well.”

The bill would further allow the state to sue supervisors of any officer who tries to prevent someone from photographing or recording them. That provision takes direct aim at a pattern of interference that critics say has grown more common during immigration enforcement operations.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, a Democrat from New Haven, argued that the state has not just the authority but the obligation to act. He pointed to the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers not granted to the federal government for the individual states, as the constitutional foundation for the legislation.

Connecticut would not be going it alone. California, Massachusetts, Maine, and Illinois have all passed comparable laws, giving the state a legal framework to model and a coalition of precedents to lean on if the measures face court challenges.

The bill cleared the Judiciary Committee and now awaits a vote in the full Senate before it can move to the House and then to Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk. Whether Lamont would sign it has not been publicly addressed, though his administration has been consistently critical of the federal government’s immigration enforcement posture in the state.

The legislation sits inside a broader political fight between Hartford and Washington over who controls enforcement activity on Connecticut soil. Federal immigration operations have accelerated across the state in recent months, generating documented incidents in churches, schools, and courthouses. State officials argue that some of those operations have crossed legal lines and that residents have been left without a meaningful remedy.

Tong has insisted the bill breaks no new ground. What it does is build a mechanism that currently exists only in theory, giving Connecticut residents an actual legal door to walk through when they believe their rights have been violated by a federal agent. In a state with a long tradition of asserting its institutional independence, that framing carries weight. The question now is whether the votes are there to see it through both chambers.