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Danbury day laborers arrested in 2006 park sting using fake job offer

Eleven day laborers were lured by an undercover officer offering work at a Danbury park in 2006, then arrested; some were held weeks before release. A lawsuit over the sting ended in a $650,000 settlement.

Sep 19, 2006Danbury, CT

Danbury day laborers arrested in 2006 park sting using fake job offer
Photo via Hartford Courant

Eleven day laborers, known as the Danbury 11, were arrested in a 2006 sting operation at Kennedy Park in Danbury, Connecticut, in which an undercover police officer posing as a contractor offered them $11-an-hour work, then drove them to a location where other officers and federal immigration agents were waiting. Two were voluntarily deported shortly after, while others were detained for two to five weeks before being released on bail ranging from $1,500 to $15,000. One of the men, Juan Barrera, said he and other workers were denied phone calls and not told for days why they were being held. In September 2007, the Yale Law School Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, Barrera v. Boughton, on behalf of nine or ten of the men against the city of Danbury, its mayor, local police officers, and federal immigration officials alleging racial profiling and unlawful local enforcement of federal immigration law; the case, with eight remaining plaintiffs, was ultimately resolved with a $650,000 settlement and also produced a related immigration appeal, Reyes v. Lynch, decided by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

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