Gov. Ned Lamont linked Republican challenger Ryan Fazio to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants with an ad featuring a Black minister decrying racial profiling by immigration agents and Fazio’s vote against a law intended to make schools and churches off limits to ICE.
The ad, released Wednesday by the Democratic governor’s reelection campaign, is the first attacking Fazio by name, and it comes days after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents raised their profile in Connecticut with arrests of migrant parents at school bus stop in Danbury.
“Members of my congregation are fearful of going outside because of these ICE agents. They’re stopping individuals based on the color of their skin,” Senior Pastor Lindsay Curtis of Grace Baptist Church in Norwalk says in the ad.
“Thankfully, Gov. Lamont stepped in. He signed a law barring ICE agents from our churches and our schools,” Curtis says. “But Ryan Fazio sided with Trump to allow ICE into our schools and our houses of worship. I really can’t imagine him being governor. That is too extreme for Connecticut.”
The ad is referring to a law passed in 2026 with a provision aimed at ICE that defines schools, hospitals, courthouses and places of worship as “protected areas” where law enforcement cannot make an arrest without a judicial warrant. Fazio, a state senator, and every other Republican opposed the bill, as did a few Democrats.
“I think it is very striking that the very first commercial ad in the general election campaign of a man who’s been in office for eight years is lying about his opponent rather than defending his own record or talking about his agenda for a potential third term,” Fazio said.
Given that Fazio voted against the measure referenced in the ad and filed a bill in 2025 to repeal revisions of the Trust Act passed in 2019, how is the ad a lie?
“First of all, because the governor well knows that nothing, no law or policy passed at the state level constitutionally affects federal policy,” Fazio said. “So it’s constitutionally a lie for anyone who’s taken fifth grade civics. Plus, I wonder if he would label as ‘extreme’ the Democratic members of the legislature who voted no on that legislation.”
Lamont said the 2026 bill establishing protected areas was an important statement of intent by Connecticut.
“Generally speaking, they’ve respected our purpose. And generally speaking, we work with them when it comes to a case of a serious criminal,” Lamont said.
The measure, Senate Bill 397, passed on votes of 24-10 in the Senate and 91-53 in the House. No Democrat in the Senate opposed the bill. In the House, four Democrats joined all 49 Republicans in opposition.
Fazio, who was elected to the Senate in a special election in 2021, said he would have voted for the original Trust Act, which passed the General Assembly unanimously in 2013 during the Obama administration.
Democrats say the original bill and revisions passed in 2019 during the first Trump administration were intended to ensure an undocumented immigrant would feel safe reporting a crime or seeking aid from police without fear of being turned over to ICE.
Fazio said the revisions hampered local authorities from cooperating with ICE, and he favored repealing them.
“I think that the governor was wrong and radical in tying the hands of state and federal law enforcement in communicating with federal authorities in the case of people who are here illegally, who have been convicted of Class C, D and E felonies like manslaughter and sexual abuse,” Fazio said.
Fazio on Wednesday repeated a claim he made on Facebook in January that the 2019 revisions had kept the state from holding an undocumented immigrant for ICE. The man and his wife pleaded guilty to risk of injury and other charges related to the death of their two year-old son, Liam Rivera.
Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, said nothing in the Trust Act or its revisions prevents ICE from arresting and deporting anyone.
“All the Trust Act says is we don’t want our state police and local police resources to be engaged in federal immigration enforcement,” he said.
