There was little doubt that President Donald Trump’s immigration policies would come up at some point during CT Mirror’s “In The Room” session with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy on Wednesday.

Few, however, anticipated those policies would affect the event itself.

The plan was for Murphy to arrive at 5:15 p.m. and spend the next 45 minutes mingling with attendees at a reception before the webcast. Instead, he spent that time on the road from Danbury before finally walking onstage at roughly 6:07 p.m. 

Shortly after sitting down, Murphy told the crowd what had happened: There had been “extraordinary ICE activity” that day in Danbury, and he had been visiting the city at the request of its mayor.

ICE’s presence, Murphy told the audience, was “not coincidental to the beginning of the school year.”

“If you can sort of imagine how one would design a system intended to terrorize a community — not intended to keep the community safe — you would design what they’re doing in Danbury right now,” Murphy said.

He went on to explain: That morning, ICE agents had waited at a bus stop in Danbury as parents dropped off their children. Once the children were on the bus, the agents arrested their parents. This, Murphy said, was intentional.

“They knew what would happen when the bus came back, right? The kids don’t know that their parents are gone. The bus comes back … this little 7-year-old gets dropped off expecting to be greeted by their parent, and there’s no parent,” Murphy said, drawing muffled exclamations from the crowd.

He described this as a new “scale” of ICE enforcement for Danbury. 

“I fear that, you know, this is a sign of what’s to come for the fall in Connecticut cities,” Murphy said.

So what can and should be done to solve the problem? asked the host of the event, CT Mirror’s John Dankosky.

Murphy said the first step is to define what the problem is. The Trump administration, he said, defines it as an invasion of people from other countries coming to the U.S.

“That is a fake problem,” Murphy said. “Immigrants, first generation immigrants and undocumented immigrants, both commit crimes at rates lower than natural-born Americans. … So if you want to live in a safe community, you are actually better off living in a community with people that just got to the United States of America.”

He said the real problem is that Americans perceive the U.S. immigration system to be lawless — something that would have been solved, he added, if Congress had passed an immigration reform bill he sponsored in 2024. Trump, facing multiple criminal investigations and running for a second term, urged Republicans to kill the bill, which had enjoyed bipartisan support.

“You can ask the question: Had we passed that bill, would Donald Trump have been elected?” Murphy mused.

When they finished discussing immigration, Dankosky asked Murphy about the recent primary defeat of U.S. Rep. John Larson, whom Murphy had endorsed. Murphy replied that he also likes Luke Bronin, the former Hartford mayor who defeated Larson in the primary, but defended his support for outgoing representative.

“I definitely have seen people who have outlived their effectiveness. I just didn’t think that that was true of John,” Murphy said.

But you think some politicians hang on too long? Dankosky asked.

“Well, sure. I mean, I still, I haven’t seen Mitch McConnell in months,” Murphy said. “Diane Feinstein on the Democratic side was another example … and obviously, the American public judged that Joe Biden had stayed too long, and, you know, it took far too long for the Democratic Party to come to terms with” that.

But when asked whether his Senate counterpart, Richard Blumenthal — who will be 82 if reelected in 2028 — should take a hint from Biden’s example, Murphy demurred.

“That’s Dick’s decision to make,” Murphy said. “As to the question of whether Dick Blumenthal still has the energy to be a United States senator — I am still trying to keep up with Dick Blumenthal.”

He said he doesn’t like the idea of term limits for members of Congress, citing the argument that it gives too much power to unelected staffers and lobbyists. First-term members of Congress, he said, are forced to spend most of their time raising money because of what he described as a broken campaign finance system.

Giving term limits to Supreme Court justices, however, was something Murphy said is worth considering, because there are fewer ways to remove justices than to remove legislators.

Murphy also discussed the divisions within the Democratic party and pushed back on the typical framing of “progressive versus moderate.”

“I think there’s a market fundamentalist wing of the Democratic Party that thinks the market can solve everything … and then there are Democrats like me who think that the market is fundamentally broken and corrupted, and that we need much bigger changes,” Murphy said.

He added, “I see the world as worker power versus corporate power. I don’t necessarily see it as left versus right.”

His vision for the Democratic Party, he said, is built around two “tentpoles”: unrigging the economy and unrigging democracy.

“If you agree, I want you in the tent,” Murphy said. “And if you disagree with me on other issues that I feel are really important, like guns or climate or gay rights, let’s have that conversation.”

He said he thinks it’s easier to persuade people once they’re “in the tent” than otherwise.

On Iran, Murphy expressed harsh criticism of how the Trump administration has managed the conflict.

“It’s really hard to overhype the incompetence, the gross incompetence, of the crowd that is in charge,” Murphy said.

He said at this point, he doesn’t think Washington can get a good deal with Tehran. He urged the president to unilaterally halt the war and said U.S. allies — namely Europe and the Gulf states — would likely have to negotiate an opening to the Strait of Hormuz.

The last part of the evening’s conversation touched on Murphy’s new book, “Crisis of the Common Good.” The senator seemed surprised when Dankosky began by drawing a comparison to, of all people, Ralph Nader.

No, Murphy said, he had not drawn from Nader in writing his book. But, he said, it is “a pretty universal conversation” — how the U.S. is becoming more isolated and people feel increasingly disconnected and powerless.

His idea of the common good: “We should have a society that makes it easier for us to care about the common good. About how the community is doing.” That’s something he said the country has lost in recent decades and which he believes government can help restore.

When Dankosky suggested the book might be a policy platform for someone considering a run for president, Murphy pushed back — slightly.

“Other people have had the opposite view … because it is a book that’s not about me,” Murphy said.

But does he think about it? Dankosky asked.

“I can’t say that I don’t think about it, in part because I get asked about it all the time,” Murphy said. But he also has “a pretty powerful job” now, and it’s one that he enjoys.

His closing remarks were, “I don’t know what I’m going to do after this election. I don’t. But I don’t need to run for president to make a difference.”