ICE had a warrant.
That was why agents were able to wrench three immigrants from a South Burlington home, prompting an intense, hourslong confrontation between law enforcement and activists. The criminal search warrant, signed by a federal judge in Vermont, was what local and state police say compelled them to provide security for the federal agents who pushed through a human blockade and rammed down the door to the Dorset Street home.
Then, the next morning, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont revealed that the man who Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were pursuing – a Mexican national who they say fled them in the morning, crashed into two vehicles and retreated to the home – had not been taken into custody. The subject of the search warrant wasn't inside.
Instead, federal agents detained two Ecuadoran sisters, one 20 and the other 31, who they encountered in the home, along with a 31-year-old Honduran man, according to federal court records. They were taken to state prisons before being transferred to Department of Homeland Security custody, their attorneys said. The attorneys have filed petitions to prevent DHS from transferring their clients outside Vermont while they pursue their release.
“It was excessive, it was unnecessary," said Nathan Virag, an immigration attorney representing the younger sister, speaking of the raid. “They ended up traumatizing an entire family. All for nothing.”
The revelation raises additional questions about ICE agents’ enforcement tactics and investigative competency in Vermont. It is also amplifying public scrutiny of the controversial decision by local and state law enforcement on Wednesday to assist them.
Police in Burlington and South Burlington and elected leaders across Vermont have sharply criticized the federal agents. Republican Gov. Phil Scott said in a statement Thursday that their actions showed a “lack of training, coordination, leadership, and outdated tactics” that “put both peaceful protesters and Vermont law enforcement in a difficult situation.”
The confrontation culminated on Wednesday evening when ICE agents strode toward a group of activists who were surrounding the last federal vehicle that remained in the street, sprayed them with chemical irritants and set off flashbangs. Videos showed agents pulling demonstrators from the ground and thrusting them aside, before the car drove away.
By then, activists and police had been clashing in the street for hours. Once ICE agents took the three immigrants into custody, the demonstrators rushed into Dorset Street in an effort to prevent the agents from leaving. State police in full tactical gear stood eye-to-eye with them, preventing most from approaching the vehicle. The clashes spread up and down the street, which local police had closed down, as federal agents looked for other ways to leave. Protesters blew whistles in officers’ faces, screamed insults and threw objects at their cars.
More from Vermont Public: The South Burlington ICE raid explained
Local and state law enforcement said they acted with restraint despite being pushed and spit on by activists and pelted with water bottles and clods of mud, Vermont State Police said in a statement Thursday. But local police did throw protesters to the ground in instances that were captured on video.
A Thursday press release from Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney Stanak stated that one Burlington police officer had used pepper spray and an officer was under review for allegedly using excessive force. State police also acknowledged Thursday that one trooper sprayed an irritant after someone smashed the window of a VSP van that was leaving the scene.
Eight activists were detained during the chaotic encounter. State police cited three people with disorderly conduct, the agency said.
Rock and a hard place?
State police on Thursday provided a more detailed account of the negotiations between local and federal law enforcement leading up to the search of the home.
The agency’s statement describes a dilemma that Vermont law enforcement believe they faced: stand aside and risk a dangerous clash between an aggressive federal agency and a large group of determined protesters, or help ICE execute its search warrant and have more control over the level of police force used.
The agency said ICE had planned to bring “additional federal resources” from out of state to assist in their search. But the feds agreed to scale back their response if local law enforcement could help their agents stay safe, state police said.
The statement also revealed that the feds asked Vermont State Police to deploy its Critical Action Team — a heavily armed force trained in crowd control — to the scene once activists refused to let authorities inside the home.
The specialized troopers pushed aside activists and pulled them from the front steps so ICE agents could enter the residence and escort the three immigrant detainees to the agents’ unmarked cruiser.
Nikhil Goyal, a University of Vermont professor and state Senate candidate who participated in the protests, said the troopers’ conduct amounted to “collaboration.”
“There’s a row of threatening state troopers that are blocking access to the home,” he said during the raid. “They’ve been throwing protesters to the ground, people who are standing here peacefully to protect one of our neighbors just from being detained and thrown into a dungeon in Louisiana or another country.”
Calls for scrutiny
His comments were echoed by Chittenden County Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, who said she witnessed state police “quite happily participating and aiding federal agents.”
“I watched state troopers help escort a U.S. citizen and protester to a federal law enforcement’s unmarked vehicle,” she said.
Vyhovsky, a Progressive/Democrat, said she wants an independent legislative review of state police’s role in the operation.
Scott and Vermont State Police director Col. Matthew Birmingham briefed legislative leaders Thursday morning. Windham County Sen. Nader Hashim, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former state trooper, said he’s particularly concerned about videos and photos he’s seen of troopers on scene “wearing masks and not having nametags.”
“I have a lot of questions about what happened, and what should have happened, and a number of things that I saw in the videos that have been shared with me,” he said.
South Burlington Rep. Martin LaLonde, the Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said Birmingham promised to deliver an “after-action report” to lawmakers in approximately one week. He said he’s withholding judgment on law enforcement’s conduct until that report arrives. Legislative leaders say they’ll hold a public hearing to review the report once it’s submitted.
“At this stage I don’t have enough information either to exonerate them or to blame them,” LaLonde said.
Scott spokesperson Amanda Wheeler said the governor was not directly involved in the decision to send state police to the scene. Scott has had previous conversations with the Department of Public Safety about what the state police posture ought to look like if events like the ones that unfolded in Minnesota earlier this year started happening in Vermont.
Wheeler said state police are planning uniform changes that would make troopers more visibly distinguishable from federal immigration authorities.
Letter of the law
The scene of local police standing alongside ICE agents also invited scrutiny over whether the operation was in line with the state’s Fair and Impartial Policing Policy. That policy prohibits Vermont law enforcement agencies from collaborating with federal authorities on civil immigration matters.
Migrant Justice, the organization that helped organize the standoff with police outside the Dorset Street home, accused state and local police of violating the policy. The group claimed that state troopers had “smashed down the door to the home, allowing ICE agents to rush inside,” a claim that is contradicted by video taken by Vermont Public. The footage shows federal agents wearing vests over plain clothes striking the door with a handheld battering ram.
The Fair and Impartial Policing Policy does not stop state police from aiding federal agents in criminal cases. The warrant issued for Deyvi Daniel Corona-Sanchez was for an alleged criminal offense of reentering the United States after previously being deported. However, the three individuals arrested inside the Dorset Street home were not named in that warrant.
Allegations of fair and impartial policing violations are generally investigated by an officer’s employing agency or, in some instances, the Vermont Criminal Justice Council.
The ACLU of Vermont stopped short of saying that police had broken the policy.
“I can’t sit here today and say this or that provision of FIP clearly were or were not violated,” staff attorney Lia Ernst said.
Ernst, however, noted that the policy emphasizes that “enforcement of federal criminal immigration law is generally not a priority” for state and local police.
“Why, when the state’s policy is that enforcement of federal criminal immigration law is not a priority … are we expending what appears to be an extraordinary amount of resources, if that’s what the facts show?” she said.
Ernst said she has serious concerns with videos and pictures she’s seen of the state police response on Wednesday. She said state and local law enforcement officials can play an important role in protecting the public from “wildly out of control and cruel and violent ICE and CBP agents.”
In his statement, the governor also assigned responsibility for the chaotic scene to some protesters, whom he referred to as “those there to agitate.”
Their actions, and those of federal officials, “further escalated a situation that was avoidable from the start,” Scott said.
The 31-year-old woman who ICE detained during the search is a mother with children in the South Burlington School District, her attorney, Kristen Connors wrote in court filings. She lived in the home that ICE raided, the documents assert, and had a hearing in her pending asylum case scheduled for 2027.
The woman was taken to the state’s women’s prison, Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, before being released into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, Connelly wrote.
U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford approved an emergency restraining order preventing federal authorities from transferring the woman outside Vermont — a tactic that ICE has used in previous immigration cases.
The sisters would not typically be a target for detention by immigration officials, Virag, the other immigration attorney, said.
If not for the warrant targeting a man who was not even there, Virag said, “they wouldn’t have been picked up. Absolutely not.”
