Community defends migrant workers

A community rapid response to an ICE operation at a residence in South Burlington turned into a violent multi-agency police and ICE operation against migrant worker protectors. A huge public outcry has called into question policy commitments preventing state and local police from aiding federal immigrant abductions, and deepened the resolve of the local immigrant justice movement.

On March 11, a message went out across Vermont’s Migrant Justice’s rapid response network that ICE was attempting to detain an undocumented migrant in the city of South Burlington. Migrant Justice is a Vermont-based migrant-lead organization whose goal is to “build the voice, capacity, and power of the immigrant farmworker community to organize for economic justice and human rights.”

In addition to its advocacy work, the organization uses its rapid response network to notify community members of ICE presence in the area and to mobilize support for those who have been detained. Since Donald Trump’s return to office, the response network has successfully mobilized migrant and non-migrant community members for acts of peaceful solidarity when ICE is spotted in an area or someone has been detained.

On this occasion, however, what followed was a display of state violence that has shocked our community.

Early in the morning, three unmarked ICE vehicles boxed in a car during the morning rush hour traffic in the city of South Burlington. In response, the driver fled into a small white house, and soon afterward, both the South Burlington Police and Migrant Justice were notified of the situation. The roughly dozen ICE agents, with brief support from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), were countered by a hundred community members responding to Migrant Justice’s call for support. Numbers continued to grow throughout the day, and photos of an ICE agent’s phone screen showed that ICE, hugely outnumbered by protectors, was on the verge of calling off the operation until state and local police arrived to support them.

Vermont State Police and the Burlington Police Department came to assist ICE, warning those protecting the house that more ICE officers were on their way and that they needed to move when ordered to do so. When protectors responded that the State Police didn’t have to help ICE, the latter made the legally dubious claim that if ICE provided a warrant, they indeed had to aid the federal agents.

When ICE returned with the warrant, police helped federal agents enter the house, detain three inhabitants (despite none of them being named in the warrant), and then assisted ICE’s departure when protectors attempted to block their escape.

State police choked one woman unconscious. Burlington police brutally tackled another person into a curb. Dozens of videos show local police and ICE kicking, dragging, arresting, pepper- spraying, and throwing flashbang grenades at protectors.

Migrants in the house reported that an ICE agent fell through the ceiling during a fruitless attic search for someone who was never in the house. When the agent fell, his gun fired into the crowded house. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed.

Local and state police forces were faced with a steady stream of invective from the protectors, which included “Who do you serve?,” “NAZIs collaborate!,” and “No one wants you here!”

Tellingly, at a time when the Trump regime fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and is undertaking damage control to improve the brutal and violent image of ICE and Border Patrol on U.S. streets by operating less conspicuously, state and local police actually enabled and intensified, instead of diffused, this siege and abduction.

In the week after the kidnappings, a Vermont federal judge ordered all three migrant workers detained to be immediately released. The question now is accountability.

And as far as the couple of hundred protectors standing between ICE and migrant workers go, police worked hand- and- glove with federal authorities to violently disperse them.

Political Responses

Within the context of the post-Minneapolis era, local political leaders had touted policies of non-collaboration with ICE. But state and local officials threw gasoline on the fire by denying wrongdoing, claiming they were mitigating harm by assisting ICE, protecting the First Amendment rights of protestors, and blaming unnamed agitators from the community as the problem.

The solidarity movement has rejected these slanders, identifying themselves as “protectors” rather than“protesters” and clarifying that the purpose of community defense is to prevent the kidnapping of migrant workers, not abstract free speech, which is utterly ineffective against ICE.

ICE is extremely dangerous and has increasingly become a paramilitary force that operates with impunity. It kills, it lies, it has no accountability in service of a far-right and increasingly fascist white nationalist and violent anti-worker agenda.

We are living in a “which side are you on” moment. Many state and local police are enthusiastic backers of ICE’s brutal and racist anti-immigrant crusade. Despite claims to the contrary, local police officials apparently do not recognize migrant workers as part of the community worthy of protection.

ICE carries out most abductions away from public awareness. In typical detentions, migrant workers disappear, and friends and family are left to the task of desperate searches to find them. They often languish in prison for weeks or months with no recourse. There has been a tenfold increase in abductions in Vermont in the last year.

Migrant Justice said in a statement: “These detentions demonstrate the necessity of the courageous, organized defense that supporters maintained outside the home of Cristian, Johana, and Camila [the detainees] last week. We cannot and must not allow ICE’s attacks to be normalized, to be swept under the rug. Likewise, the release of Cristian and Jaime – and of Johana earlier this week – demonstrates the power of sustained solidarity, of making sure that detained community members are not alone.”

In a rally the day following the residential defence, migrant organizers led a crucially important chant: “Solo el pueblo puede salvar al pueblo,” “Only the people can save the people.”

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: ellerieann11; modified by Tempest.