BRATTLEBORO-As long as the United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) believes it has the freedom to kidnap, terrorize, and deport new Americans, attorneys will be necessary.
Which is why, in 2025, State Treasurer Michael Pieciak — a Brattleboro native — found time away from his official state duties to help create the Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund (VILDF).
On April 2, Pieciak brought his traveling fundraising appeal to the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, bringing with him such distinguished guests as Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Sen. Robert Kennedy and current president of the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, to speak to a crowd of about 100 potential donors.
Also speaking were attorney and law professor Jill Martin Diaz, the inaugural executive director of the newly incorporated Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, and Joe Wiah, the head of the Ethiopian Community Development Council’s Multicultural Community Center in Brattleboro.
Pieciak said the impetus for the fund was the story of two students in Burlington.
“We heard about two individuals who were going to school up in Burlington who were given an order to self-deport from the federal government,” Pieciek said. “And their superintendent reached out to everybody they could think of to say, ‘What should we do? What legal support is there for these two young high school students?’
“They were terrified, and they decided to go back to their home country even though, after the fact, it turned out that there were a lot of legal remedies that they could have used to stay here in this country.”
When Pieciak heard that story, he said, he thought about how terrifying the experience must have been for the students and about “how much of an injustice that is that their rights weren’t able to be fully heard.”
“But also, we need young people in our state,” he said. “So the idea that we were going to have two young high school students that otherwise would have stayed and then been productive members of the community go back to their home country, just seemed totally ridiculous.”
Pieciak created the VILDF, which is the only fund like it in the country that he knows about.
“The idea was that we needed to raise money so that organizations can receive grants to hire lawyers and to hire legal professionals,” he said.
“I don’t have the skills of the lawyers, but I do have the ability to bring people together, start the fund, raise money for it, provide the grants out to the organizations, and that’s what we set out to do,” Pieciak added.
The fund has now raised over $850,000 and is hoping to reach $1 million by May from thousands of donors.
“We want to get more lawyers working on behalf of new Americans,” Pieciak said. “We want to have more legal assistance so that those lawyers can focus on the job of protecting their clients, and we want to make sure that we also get more legal support so those experts have time to train all of the pro bono lawyers that want to step up in this moment as well.”
When these immigration attorneys are doing their important work, they’re not just simply standing up and representing their clients, Pieciak said.
“They’re really representing all of us,” he said. “If somebody’s rights can be violated, then anybody’s rights can be violated. In that way, I think they are the heroes of this moment. They are the heroes of democracy.”
Money for the fund is donated to the United Way of Northwest Vermont, which is the fund’s fiscal sponsor.
“And then we have an advisory group that makes decisions around grants,” Pieciak said. “The Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, the Vermont Afghan Refugee Association, and the Vermont Law School have all won recent grants.”
The museum event provided an opportunity for Windham County residents to learn what is happening on the ground in Vermont from attorneys deeply involved in current immigration casework, Pieciak said.
“Vermonters want to see a justice system that operates fairly, transparently, and in keeping with the democratic principles that have defined our country for 250 years,” Pieciak told the audience. “Because the presence of an attorney is not required in immigration court proceedings, supporting this effort is a direct way to make sure our neighbors and friends receive a fair hearing on the merits of their case.”
What happens when nobody is taping?
Within the past few years, approximately 600 immigrants have settled in southern Vermont.
Many of them were fleeing from Afghanistan, where in some cases their families remain trapped. People from Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Central Africa, and Eritrea have also settled here.
The new Americans now work in supermarkets, in medical facilities, at factories, at restaurants, and in many other places. They have made southern Vermont their home.
“It’s a privilege for this museum to support this important cause, which is the welfare and well-being and the rights of immigrants and beyond,” said Danny Lichtenfeld, the museum’s director.
“This museum was founded by immigrants and the children of immigrants. Our staff includes new Americans who have come to Brattleboro within the past five years; I’m the grandchild of immigrants,” he said.
Lichtenfeld called it “astonishing” that in the 250th anniversary of the United States, “this is actually a cause we have to be working hard for and advocating for.”
“That’s preposterous, but here we are, and we’re doing the work because we have to, because that’s what Vermonters do and New Englanders do,” he said.
Pieciak insists that immigration defense is not a partisan issue.
“It’s really an American issue,” Pieciak said. “The fund was created because we heard so many complaints from Vermonters who were being targeted by the federal administration. They were getting letters that said they had to self-deport out of the United States. They were being detained on their job sites.”
He said that “so many of the folks that were being detained are doing critical jobs in our economy.”
“They are growing our food,” Pieciak said. “They are building our housing. They are running our manufacturing sites. They are so critical to the Vermont economy.”
He said that 30,000 Vermonters are foreign-born, and they are critical to the state’s economy.
“They represent $1.7 billion of economic activity in our state,” Pieciak said. “They represent $1.2 billion of spending power in our state. They pay over half a billion dollars in taxes. They pay more in taxes than any of them takes in benefits. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.
“They are more connected to the workforce than the average Vermonter, and they are younger than the average Vermonter,” he added.
One near consensus is that Vermont needs more young people —particularly, more people in its workforce, more people contributing to the economy, and more people spending money.
“And that is exactly what the new American community is doing every single day,” Pieciak said.
“In fact, in my opinion, the only way Vermont is going to be successful into the future is if we are open and welcoming more new Americans into our communities here in Vermont,” he added.
The fund, Pieciak said, is like “planting a flag and saying loudly and clearly, ‘We need you. We want you to make our communities better and stronger. And please, you always have a home here in Vermont.’”
Cruelty on our own soil
When she spoke, Kerry Kennedy told the audience that she knew and loved Windham County because her sister Kathleen had graduated from The Putney School.
“I said, ‘This is where I want to live,’” Kennedy said. “I love this part of our country, and I spend a lot of time here.”
Kennedy spoke about the Human Rights Center that bears the name of her parents. The organization traces its roots to a foundation that was started in the aftermath of her father’s assassination in 1968 and, according to its website, “has remained focused on the protection of civic space ― the freedoms of assembly, association, and expression; the right to dissent without fear of reprisal or persecution; the most basic of rights upon which all others are based.”
“We have an education program, and we have a program where we work with the investment community so that they put downward pressure on the companies they’re investing in to be in compliance with human rights boards,” Kennedy said. “It’s not easy to do that. And then the third part of the work we do is we sue governments that are abusing people’s rights.”
Internationally, Kennedy said, her organization has about 40 cases going at any one time, and it has never lost a case.
“Then domestically, we have all these cases against the Trump administration, some on anti-Black and anti-Brown violence by police, and then the rest are all abuses by ICE in detention,” Kennedy said. “So all of you know about the abuses by ICE out of detention, because we’ve seen it.”
She implored the audience: “Imagine — they know you’re videotaping it and they do it anyway.”
“Now, think about what they feel comfortable doing when you’re in detention and there is nobody videotaping,” Kennedy continued. “That’s what we cover, and none of our work would be possible without organizations like the Immigration Legal Defense Fund. We work with front-line immigration organizations across the country, and this is the front line. This is how we get change made.”
She detailed some of the abuses carried on in detention.
“We have about a dozen people who were raped and sexually assaulted in ICE facilities by U.S. immigration officials,” Kennedy said. “This is our government. This is not OK.”
Kennedy said there were cases of children “being coerced into saying that they’re adults, that they’re over 18, so that they can [legally sign] voluntary departure forms and be deported right away. I mean, this is insanity. Why are we doing this?”
She spoke about one woman she met at a facility near New Orleans.
“I was in rural Louisiana a few months ago, and I was talking to one of our clients,” Kennedy said. “She was explaining that she’s from Honduras, and she had been a victim of sexual slavery. She was brought over when she was 14, and she experienced multiple rapes. You could imagine what she experienced as a sex slave.”
The client “escaped when she was about 18.”
“She pulled her life together, and then she started an organization to help survivors of sex trafficking,” Kennedy continued. “She was running that in New Orleans, and she was helping the police prosecute her abuser.”
About a year ago, her client went to see her doctor, who suspected that she had colon cancer. Because of the aggressive nature of the cancer, she was urged to get an immediate X-ray.
“A couple of days later, she gets picked up by ICE,” Kennedy said, and the woman spent six months of detention in ICE facilities, unable to get medical treatment.
That’s cruelty, Kennedy said, and this cruelty is being done on our own American soil. That is why she said supporting the legal defense fund is so necessary.
“What’s going on in Washington?” Kennedy said. “This is horrible. All of us feel like victims. Our friends feel like victims. Every single one of the people in Vermont who were picked up by ICE is a victim.
“We’ve got to stop that. We’ve got to stop feeling like victims and start feeling like heroes. And the difference between a victim and a hero is activism with a loving heart.
“That’s what this organization is about,” Kennedy said. “That’s why we’re all here tonight, to support this work. And that’s why I’m here.”
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.