In light of the violent and sometimes homicidal attacks in Minnesota and Maine on immigrants, protestors, and American civil liberties, Vermont is gearing up for if — or when — the same ugly things happen here.
There were unofficial reports on Monday that ICE agents were staying in a Brattleboro motel. There have been other unconfirmed reports of recent activity by ICE agents at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, where several refugee families are temporarily living.
In Vermont, respected and welcomed immigrants are working on our farms as well as in our cities and factories, taking care of our elderly, repairing our decks, painting murals on our walls, and being warmly welcomed into our communities. To keep Vermont’s immigrant population safe, an eye-opening amount of work and organization has been going on. Vermonters are becoming primed to take action.
On Jan. 29, more than 1,100 people attended a Zoom conference to learn about the current state of immigrant protection in Vermont and how they can help.
“Thank you all for tuning in,” said attorney and former Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, who now leads the Vermont Afghan Alliance. The nonprofit, which works to support and assist immigrants from Afghanistan who resettle in this country, organized the conference.
“We initially created this information session with the hope of sharing information with volunteers, allies and members of the public about how they can support the communities that we all work with,” Gray said. “We anticipated a couple of hundred people. But over 1,100 people have RSVPed.”
“I’m glad to know we’re not alone,” one immigrant rights attorney commented.
Signaling the strength of protections in Vermont against violence and enforced deportation, other organizations joined Gray at the conference, including Migrant Justice, Vermont Interfaith Action (VIA), the Vermont arm of U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI-VT), the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), Central Vermont Refugee Action Network (CVRAN), Association of Africans Living in Vermont (AALV), and Vermont Asylum Assistance Project (VAAP).
“We want to recognize that the panelists and organizations here today are a few of many, many in the state who are showing up and doing incredible work,” Gray said. “So if you’re an organization that’s not speaking today but you have resources to share, share them as we work to get through this very, very challenging time together.”
These groups are not the only ones protesting recent government violence against immigrants.
Marches have been happening all over the state. For example, in freezing weather on Jan. 30, thousands of people carrying homemade signs took to the street in Burlington to protest federal actions by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and other agencies.
Other kinds of organizing is happening as well. Third Act Vermont, for example, is registering voters to flip the U.S. House of Representatives from Republican to Democrat in the next election.
And Vermont Legal Aid (VLA), along with the VAAP, is launching an Immigration Community Lawyering Initiative.
In a recent press release, VLA said the “new, innovative partnership” would “expand access to high-quality, responsive immigration legal services across Vermont,” noting that the collaboration establishes an immigration law practice to the organization that offers civil legal services for low-income Vermonters.
The partnership adds two staff attorneys who will serve immigrant communities in central and southern Vermont. They will use a “community based lawyering model designed to meet people where they are,” meaning they plan to embed the attorneys in the immigrant communities themselves to “build trust and remove barriers to justice.”
There are still not enough immigration attorneys in Vermont, however. A bill (H.742) introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 22 would “require the state of Vermont to establish a program to provide legal assistance to persons detained in Vermont in connection with federal immigration proceedings.”
How it started
On Jan. 9, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which operates under the DHS umbrella, launched what they called Operation PARRIS (Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening), a “sweeping initiative reexamining thousands of refugee cases through new background checks and intensive verification of refugee claims.”
The government claimed it was finding cases of fraud and other crimes and began referring refugees to ICE.
“Minnesota is ground zero for the war on fraud,” said an unnamed DHS spokesperson in a news release. “This operation in Minnesota demonstrates that the Trump administration will not stand idly by as the U.S. immigration system is weaponized by those seeking to defraud the American people. American citizens and the rule of law come first, always.”
However, many believe the movement to eliminate immigrants is not really about fraud at all, said Rachel Elliott, an organizer with Migrant Justice.
“Immigration enforcement isn’t about safety,” Elliott said. “It’s about power, and it’s about control. It’s about white supremacy, and it’s about enforcing capitalism. Understanding where immigration enforcement comes from is vital to informing the way that we can fight back against it.”
Minnesota has become the epicenter for massive anti-ICE rallies. And after the death by federal agents of two separate American protestors, plus the arrest and deportation (and sometimes return) of several immigrants, some court battles, plus the violent beatings and arrests of many protestors, including journalists, Minnesota and, in some ways Maine, have become the fulcrum for activities designed to protect the immigrants in our midst.
“The focus has been individuals who are refugees in the legal sense,” Gray explained — those who “came here as refugees and who do not yet have their green card.”
“This would really be individuals who arrived under the Biden administration, most likely within the last five years or less,” she said. “This operation has also targeted asylum seekers, so those who have a pending asylum claim.”
Individuals from those two populations “have to share their documentation and address biometrics with the U.S. government,”Gray said. “ICE has individuals’ current addresses and their places of employment, and are going to those places to try to find individuals.”
Once these individuals are detained, they are often quickly taken to Texas, Gray said, where the “reverification” or “rescreening” process happens.
“And for those individuals who are found to be eligible to remain in the United States, sometimes their verification process ends in Texas, and they are let go in Texas without their documents,” Gray said.
From events on the ground in Minnesota, it is also known that individuals who may have an accent or who may appear to be an immigrant have been swept up and at times temporarily held at a location within Minnesota and then, ultimately, released.
“But this has also included U.S. citizens, so the concerns are quite broad and significant,” Gray said, noting the operation has expanded in recent days.
“Now we have concern and more clarity that there will be a surge of ICE activity here in Vermont,” she said. “It’s not a matter of if, but really, when.”
And so, she said, the focus of the video conference was about “building connection, building preparedness, communicating what we know with all of you as organizations, so that we can invite your support as we work to keep our newest Vermonters, our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, feeling deeply safe and supported here in the state.”
Actions to take
Attorney Emma Matters from the VAAP urged participants to prepare “for the inevitability that not everyone is going to be able to access an immigration attorney. That is an unfortunate and scary reality, but it is the reality there simply are not enough immigration attorneys to respond to the volume of need.”
Supporters should make sure that the immigrants they know keep copies of their documents — not the originals — on their persons at all times, call participants advised. They should ask trusted friends or supporters to keep other copies of these papers. The originals should be safely locked away. That way, if someone is detained and their papers taken, their documentation is still available.
Matters said the most important thing right now, with so many people and organizations wanting to help, is to centralize legal intake within the state of Vermont.
“It helps prevent us from duplicating work and accidentally working at cross purposes with each other, [which] really ends up further limiting the amount of individuals that we can potentially represent,” she said.
Matters said a new intake form was being introduced on her organization’s website for people who need assistance.
VAAP has also been given funding by the state to prepare a resource library, Matters said.
She said a “difficult reality” is that “as much as we want to talk about harm prevention in this moment, harm is going to happen.”
“Detentions are already happening, and they are going to happen, and the best thing that we can do is be as prepared as possible to support people leading up to and in the event of a detention occurring,” Matters said.
The organization Migrant Justice began in 2009 after the death of an 18-year-old Mexican worker on a Vermont dairy farm. Now Migrant Justice is well-established, with a “robust” Rapid Response Network here in Vermont, Elliott said.
“The goal with rapid response is to be able to show up quickly and provide support in moments of crisis, and to be able to document what’s going on,” she said.
Since Trump returned to office, Migrant Justice has discreetly offered almost-weekly trainings “around rapid response and how to observe ICE,” Elliott said. Now, with approximately 2,000 people on its mail list, “we’re moving towards expanding the network as much as we can.”
Those interested in taking the training can begin by going to migrantjustice.net, and clicking the “Get Involved” button.
“That will bring you to a web form where you can put in your contact information and share the areas where you want to get connected,” Elliott said. “Rapid Response is one of those areas, but there’s also a lot of other work that we’re doing.”
The organization will make a training available via Zoom to anybody in the state on Tuesday, Feb. 10.
During these trainings, Migrant Justice talks about immigration enforcement, who’s doing it, and what the legal context is in Vermont.
“We’re in a pretty special, unique situation here, in part because the immigrant community here in Vermont is so deeply organized and has been for a long time,” Elliott said. “We have protections here in the state of Vermont that do not exist in other areas to the same degree. And I think that’s something to be deeply proud of and to find hope in and be inspired by.”
Migrant Justice has an emergency line available around the clock in English and in Spanish.
“You can call or message anytime, day or night, to let us know if you’re seeing something,” Elliott said. “I will say, please only reach out to this number in cases of emergency.”
Phone trees
Vermont Interfaith Action (VIA), a group of grassroots faith-based community organizers, is creating “hyperlocal” groups text messaging via the Signal app, akin to phone trees. If someone sees a suspicious vehicle or hears a rumor that ICE is in town, they can pass along the information.
“This is something that’s been being done in Los Angeles, in Minneapolis, in D.C., and across the country,” said southwestern Vermont community organizer Martha Mackey.
Such people “can share some of that more nitty gritty chatter about ICE,” Mackey said. “Instead of clogging up Migrant Justice’s hotline with more local questions,” the group is connecting people “on the ground.”
These are individuals “who know each other, who trust each other, and who can respond and be educated on when to turn to Migrant Justice to ask for immediate help for on-the-ground support,” Mackey said.
VIA is trying to design a series of mutual aid and safety hubs in every region of the state, Mackey said. It will allow even small towns to have rapid response teams to protect their neighbors.
In every region across the state, the group is setting up a series of “community resilience prep potlucks,” which Mackey said will “bring communities together.”
Participants will be “going through some basic training on how to respond in a rapid response situation, handing out whistles, letting people know their rights, [and] teaching rapid response best practices,” she said. “Then we’ll be getting people set up in their own local signal groups.”
Once VIA has done the basic training, people will be passed on to Migrant Justice for a full-length and detailed rapid response training.
“We’re also rallying clergy and people of faith to go to hearings,” Mackey said.
VIA has a newsletter and a website (viavt.org) where people can sign up to learn more. “We’d love to have more people involved,” Mackey said.
Resettlement issues
The resettlement of Afghan refugees who helped the United State during this country’s war in Afghanistan, who were airlifted out when the U.S. departed and the Taliban took over, has been proceeding well, especially in southern Vermont, according to ECDC Executive Director Joe Wiah, who thanked everyone who was helping in this “difficult time.”
“Right now, we know our clients are very afraid,” Wiah said, urging organizations to “coordinate our messaging so that we give them the information that they need to have.”
“We don’t want to add more trauma to what they are already going through,” he said.
Though the Afghan refugees have either been granted green cards — awarding them permanent legal status in the U.S. — or are in the process of getting them, “we know that this time, none of those things matter,” Wiah said, noting that ECDC can offer in-house legal services.
“And so if there are any of our clients who may be confused, let them reach out to us,” he said.”
Sonali Samarasinghe directs USCRI Vermont, which has resettled nearly 9,000 immigrants and refugees in Vermont over its 45 years. Her organization can help people travel to a doctor’s appointment or the supermarket when they are afraid to leave their houses, she said.
“The most effective way to help is to work with us directly as a volunteer,” Samarasinghe said. “Another way is to help with food security, especially and particularly since the loss of SNAP benefits for many refugees and asylees.”
Federal benefits, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have never been available to undocumented immigrants, but the One Big Beautiful Bill Act disqualified such benefits from those who have entered the country legally.
“Donate gift cards fresh produce or food staples like rice, lentils, [or] wheat flour, and bring them to our offices,” Samarasinghe said. “Our staff will distribute them to our most vulnerable clients.”
If a person wants to volunteer, they can email volunteer@refugees.org.
“Our volunteer coordinator will follow up,” she said. “All volunteers complete a background check, provide references and receive training.”
In addition to volunteering, it is important to share accurate information, Samarasinghe added.
“CRI has a safety planning guide in several languages that helps families prepare for possible immigration enforcement, arrests and detention,” she said. “It covers medical needs, finances, child care, legal support, and how to keep important records safe. We also have a ‘Know Your Rights Guide.’
She recommended the International Refugee Assistance Project, which offers “multilingual resources that explain what happens during detention and what rights people still have.”
“Having this information and sharing it with your neighbors is one concrete way to reduce fear and increase safety,” Samarasinghe said.
In summing up, she thanked Gray for organizing the seminar.
“And thank you everyone on this call for showing up today, for standing with the immigrant and refugee communities, and for reminding people that Vermont is and must remain a place of welcome,” Samarasinghe said.
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.