Connecticut Mirror spent Thursday night across the street from the Meriden courthouse and filed a piece that reads like the rally's own press release.

The headline is "Activists demand CT officials enforce the Trust Act." Sasha Allen and Laura Tillman, October 1, 2026. More than 100 people. A list of demands. Strengthen the Trust Act. Fifty million dollars in legal support for people "affected by immigration enforcement."

What you will not find in that story is the name of the man ICE took into custody inside that courthouse on September 23.

ICE identified him as Welington Leonel Almara-Diaz, an Ecuadorian national. NBC Connecticut, quoting the Department of Homeland Security, reported the same man as Leonel Aimara-Diaz. Spelling aside, the record is not a mystery. DHS said his criminal history includes two counts of driving under the influence, operating a vehicle without a license, and failure to drive in the proper lane. Border Patrol arrested him on September 8, 2022, after he crossed illegally near Hidalgo, Texas. He was later released. On October 18, 2023, an immigration judge issued a final order of removal after he failed to show up for his hearing.

The Judicial Branch confirmed the marshals received a "Warrant of Removal/Deportation" stating he was "subject to removal/deportation from the United States based upon a final order by an immigration judge." That sentence is public. The Mirror's rally story does not include it. It does not include the name. It does not include the DUIs.

Instead the paper lets the ACLU of Connecticut set the vocabulary. Executive director David McGuire is quoted calling the arrest "the Meriden courthouse attack." An arrest under a final removal order, after marshals were handed the paperwork, is now an attack. The Mirror prints it and moves on.

The photo captions do the same work. "Rally Against ICE." "Attendees scream 'ICE Out.'" Signs that say "melt ICE." The coalition in the room: Middlesex Immigrant Rights Alliance, Danbury Unites for Immigrants, Middlesex Indivisible, Hartford Deportation Defense, and CT 50501. That last one is a national protest brand, not a neighborhood watch. None of it is labeled as activism. It is the story.

The piece does bury one inconvenient fact, then walks past it. The ACLU told the Mirror there is still an "open question" whether the arrest even violated the Trust Act, because the man was never in state custody. A lot of that law only kicks in when Connecticut is holding someone. Federal officers enforcing a federal removal order are not the Meriden police. The paper reports the open question and still frames the whole piece as a demand to "enforce" a law the ACLU is not sure was broken.

DHS, in a statement NBC Connecticut carried, said several judicial marshals impeded the arrest, told Almara-Diaz to hide upstairs, and that one marshal blocked an elevator and told an officer, "I'll catch you outside and rip your face off." Demonstrators then blocked the exit. The Mirror's follow-up notes that a request for comment from ICE "went unanswered." The comment had already been given. It just did not fit the rally.

Then the story leaves the courthouse and picks up Senator Matt Lesser. He says nothing makes communities safer "when you have federal agents poking around our schools, our churches and mosques and synagogues, our healthcare facilities and our courthouses." Poking around. That is the phrase for executing a final order on a man with two DUI cases.

Lesser then ties the October 1 cutoff of HUSKY for certain noncitizens to Jeffrey Epstein. His line: the man "who used the resources of the federal government to try to protect Jeffrey Epstein and his friends has decided to take health care away from survivors of human trafficking." Chris Murphy calls the same change "an abomination" and says it cuts off care for "legal residents." What actually changed is federal eligibility. The Connecticut Hospital Association said refugees, asylees, parolees, trafficking victims, and certain special-immigrant visa holders lose HUSKY on October 1. Lawful permanent residents stay eligible. About 4,000 people in Connecticut, the hospital association said, down from an earlier estimate of 8,000. That is a policy fight. It is not an Epstein story. The Mirror prints the smear and does not slow down to explain the statute.

Here is the part that matters if you live here. The Trust Act limits when Connecticut cops and jailers help ICE. It does not repeal federal immigration law, and it does not turn a final order of removal into a suggestion. When the paper covers the protest and leaves out the man, the DUIs, the no-show, and the judge's order, readers are handed a morality play. Agents in masks. A courthouse "attack." A governor who, the speakers said, shared their outrage and opened an investigation.

Lamont's office getting thanked from the microphone is the tell. The investigation the activists want is into the marshals and the state, not into why a man under a removal order since 2023 was still walking into a Connecticut courthouse. State police can look at the video. Fine. Look at all of it, including the threat DHS says a marshal made.

Connecticut families are paying $4.48 a gallon for regular and a record near $6.50 for diesel. They are watching Hartford. They are watching the schools. They are not asking their newspaper to rename an arrest an attack and hide the record so the chant lands cleaner.

Read the name. Read the order. Then decide who left the facts on the cutting-room floor.