Editor’s note: This story was updated at 5:43 p.m. Friday, April 22 with a statement from ICE.
[A]ctivists with the group Migrant Justice are calling for the release of Victor Diaz, a human rights leader who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Thursday.
Diaz, who is Mexican and has worked in Vermont dairies for several years, was arrested by plainclothes ICE agents outside the Green Goddess restaurant in Stowe, which was hosting an event with Mexican food, according to Migrant Justice organizers.
The agents approached Diaz and addressed him by name. He was then arrested and placed in an unmarked vehicle, they said.
In a statement issued late Friday an ICE spokesman in Boston, Massachusetts, said Diaz was an enforcement priority because of a November, 2015, DUI conviction. A spokesman for Migrant Justice said the group was not aware of the conviction, but said they still believe Diaz should not have been targeted for deportation.
Friends and fellow activists describe Diaz as the face of their campaign for better wages and working conditions for Vermont’s migrant laborers, and a budding national leader in the fight for immigration reform and workers rights.
Diaz’s arrest comes a day after he returned from a conference in Los Angeles, California, with other human rights groups, where he spoke about his work with Migrant Justice. Associates say they believe his growing profile as an activist may have led to his arrest.
The ICE statement confirming that Diaz, whose full name is Jose Victor Garcia-Diaz, was arrested Thursday said that he will remain in federal custody pending removal proceedings. It also said his age is 24.
Brendan O’Neill, strategy and campaign coordinator for Migrant Justice, said he was not aware of Diaz’s DUI conviction, but that news does not change his group’s stance that Diaz should be released and his deportation proceeding halted.
Vermont’s justice system is set up to deal with people who drive under the influence, and presumably Diaz, if convicted, has gone through that process, O’Neill said.
ICE shouldn’t be spending its resources tracking down, arresting and detaining people with DUIs who may not be in the country legally, O’Neill said. He also questioned whether Diaz was treated the same as other DUI cases referred to the agency.
The Department of Homeland Security, which handles deportation proceedings, is still able to exercise what’s known as prosecutorial discretion, even in cases where people not authorized to be in this country have been convicted of a crime, O’Neill said.
Migrant Justice will continue to call on Vermont’s congressional delegation to intervene on Diaz’s behalf. They also hope to get Diaz released on bail while he awaits his removal hearings, O’Neill said.
Earlier Friday, members of Migrant Justice and the Vermont Worker’s Center gathered outside Sen. Patrick Leahy’s office in Burlington to call on Vermont’s senior senator to use his role as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to press for Diaz’s release and a stay in his deportation proceeding.
Migrant Justice has had success stalling deportation proceedings against its members in the past by getting Leahy and other Vermont politicians to pressure the Department of Homeland Security.
Danilo Lopez, an activist with Migrant Justice, was a passenger in car pulled over on I-89 for speeding in 2011. After failing to produce identification, state police handed him over to the U.S. Border Patrol, setting in motion a deportation proceeding for Lopez.
Gov. Peter Shumlin and the Vermont congressional delegation all wrote letters to the Department of Homeland Security urging prosecutorial discretion and a stay in Lopez’s deportation proceeding.
Marita Canedo, a member of Migrant Justice, said she spoke with Diaz Friday morning, and said he was upset and scared, but grateful to learn he has the support of his community.
Abel Luna, another Migrant Justice activist, said they’re calling on Leahy, as a champion of human rights, to intervene on Diaz’s behalf, and to do more to help fix what he said is a broken immigration system. The group packed Leahy’s Burlington office to deliver a letter to the senator with that message. Leahy was in Washington. D.C., Friday, but John Tracy, his state director, greeted the activists.
Tracy said that he was sorry to hear about what happened to Diaz. Leahy has long advocated for comprehensive immigration reforms that would prevent the deportation of people simply trying to support their families, he said. Leahy believes that ICE’s resources should be focused on deporting criminals, not law abiding workers, Tracy said.
Leahy’s office had learned of Diaz’s situation Friday morning, Tracy said, and a member of the senator’s staff in D.C. spoke on the phone with someone Tracy described as Diaz’s attorney. It appears the Leahy staffer actually spoke with a DHS caseworker assigned to Diaz, not an attorney, according to O’Neill.
Tracy also asked if activists could help them get Diaz to sign a privacy release that would allow Leahy’s staff to be further involved in the case.
Leahy has called for prosecutorial discretion in similar cases previously, but the senator needs more information about the circumstances of Diaz’s arrest before he can take a position on the incident, Tracy said.
Reached late Friday, Leahy spokesman David Carle said the senator’s staff was still trying to get more information from ICE and had not received a signed privacy release from Diaz. As a result, Carle said he could not comment on whether the conviction will impact the senator’s decision about whether to get involved.
O’Neill said his group plans to help Diaz mount a legal defense to his deportation.
Diaz told Canedo Friday morning that he was being taken to an ICE detention center in New Hampshire. O’Neill said due process rights in deportation proceedings are murky at best, and he described immigration courts as “their own legal system,” one that can be difficult to navigate.
It can take weeks for people held at ICE detention centers to get a bail hearing, O’Neill said. Once they’re released, fighting deportation can be an uphill battle, according to Erin Jacobsen, an attorney with the South Royalton Legal Clinic.
The deportation process is run through a civil administrative court operated by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS immigration court for the New England region is located in Boston.
Attorneys can appear by video conference, but those facing deportation must be there in person. For many migrant workers in Vermont, the travel requirement alone can make fighting deportation insurmountable, Jacobsen told VTDigger in December.
“It’s also really hard to find legal help for these kinds of cases,” Jacobsen said, and without legal help it becomes an “overwhelmingly difficult process.”
Unlike a criminal case in which the government provides poor defendants with court-appointed attorneys, there is no right to counsel in deportation proceedings. That makes it even more perplexing that Diaz was able to connect with an attorney without the help of his fellow activists.
Diaz’s friends and fellow activists could not say precisely how long Diaz has lived in Vermont, but Canedo said she had known him four years in Vermont. In 2014, Diaz got involved with Migrant Justice after enduring years of mistreatment at a farm in Addison County, according to the group.
Sylvia Knight, a volunteer with Migrant Justice, said that Diaz helped “liberate” himself and fellow workers who were staying in inhumane conditions and being forced to work long hours while some of their wages were withheld.
Diaz was ultimately able to help secure $1,800 in “stolen wages” for himself and fellow workers at that farm. Diaz continues to work long hours on a different dairy farm in Vergennes under better conditions in addition to his work as an activist.
Kate Kanalstein, co-director of the Vermont Workers Center, which works closely with Migrant Justice and shares their North Winooski street offices, said Diaz is fearless in his fight to improve conditions for his fellow migrant laborers.
“It’s just not something anybody should have to go through,” she said, “Being picked up off the street like that.”
