Updated at 5:15 p.m.
WILLISTON — Wilmer Chavarria and his spouse flew out of Managua, Nicaragua, on a direct flight to Houston on Monday, expecting to reach Burlington that night. Instead, he experienced an “extreme verbal and psychological ordeal” at the airport in Texas.
A United States citizen since 2018, Chavarria, 36, was visiting his family in Nicaragua — a trip he has made multiple times without issues since he was a 15-year-old student.
“It was my usual summer visit during the break. All of my family are there — my brother, my siblings, my extended family. Nothing unusual,” Chavarria told VTDigger at his home in Williston on Tuesday evening, shortly after his flight from Denver landed in Burlington.
Instead, the superintendent of Vermont’s most diverse school district since 2023, said he was detained and questioned for hours at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Monday night, with no reasons given.
He said he didn’t imagine they could “just hold a U.S. citizen for five hours without telling them why.”
“I never get stopped,” said Chavarria, a frequent traveler. Usually, he said, officials take a quick photo of his face, scan his passport and wave him along in a matter of seconds.
So he was concerned when a customs official waved him out of the Global Entry line he had used multiple times in the past and directed him to an immigration officer who called for an escort.
“It happened very quickly and very aggressively,” Chavarria said of being targeted and ushered away to a different part of the airport.
The first room he was placed in had about two dozen others, he said, all Black or brown, except for a German traveler. Some of them had been there for a while as they were in cots with warming blankets, Chavarria said.
What followed was a “surreal” and “dehumanizing” experience, first reported by Seven Days, that involved him being separated from his spouse, with multiple officials, many in plain clothes, interrogating him in windowless rooms without clocks.
‘You have no rights here’
According to Chavarria, the first federal official informed the man who arrived to escort the traveler that Chavarria and Cyrus Dudgeon are married and should not be separated because they are a family.
“And the guy looks at us — and this is where it became very ugly — and said, ‘What do you mean they are married?’” He then proceeded to ignore the directive and walked away, gesturing for him to follow, Chavarria said.
“If they think that’s OK to do in front of a married couple, to make that face and say that with so much disdain, then we’re in for something real ugly in there,” Chavarria said he thought at the time.
In a separate room, authorities demanded access to his phone and laptop along with his passwords.
Chavarria said he agreed to share the equipment — which they took — but declined to give them consent to access confidential school district records, barring a court order or legal counsel.
He said he repeatedly told officials he is a school superintendent and a public servant, so he is bound by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. They did not seem to understand or hear him, he said.
“We are the federal government,” one of them reportedly stated.
Chavarria said authorities questioned and mocked the validity of his 15-year marriage, suggested he was making up the fact that he was a school superintendent, and threatened him with job loss if he did not give them full access to information on his devices. Chavarria said he stayed firm in his explanation that he was prevented by federal law from doing so.
“I guess they just didn’t believe I was telling the truth,” Chavarria said.
When asked if he was being detained, Chavarria said an official laughed and told him he was not. He then asked if he was free to go and the woman said he was not. When he said that seemed to mean he was being detained, the woman told him, “Well, you’re not being handcuffed.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not directly respond to a request for comment about why Chavarria was detained. A spokesperson in Houston shared general guidelines about searches.
“Every traveler entering the United States is subject to inspection, which is essential to safeguarding national security,” Rusty Payne, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson and chaplain, wrote in an email Wednesday. He said all travelers are treated with “integrity, respect, professionalism, and according to law.”
Searches of electronic media are “rare, highly regulated” and follow “strict policies and directives,” Payne wrote.
Citizens whose devices cannot be examined “will not be denied entry into the United States based on CBP’s inability to complete an inspection of their device,” he wrote, adding that the device “may be subject to exclusion, detention, or other appropriate action or disposition.”
Chavarria said he was denied legal help and a phone call. When he asked about his rights, a Customs and Border Protection official allegedly told him to stop asking about rights. “You’re in a port of entry. There’s no rights here,” he reportedly said.
“You mean a U.S. citizen with constitutional rights loses his rights in this place?” Chavarria asked.
“Yes, you have no rights here,” the man repeated, according to Chavarria.
Hillary Rich, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, refuted that. People do not lose their constitutional rights at a port of entry, she said, and shared a document outlining rights when encountering law enforcement at the airport.
“Discriminatory detainments and intimidation do not make us safer. And try as it might, this administration cannot override our most basic constitutional freedoms in an effort to achieve its political goals,” she wrote in an email.
The protections guaranteed in the Constitution, particularly those relating to individual rights, “should have been afforded to him immediately,” Yvonne Lodico, founder and executive director of the Grace Initiative Global, a Vermont NGO that serves several refugee groups in Vermont, wrote in an email. Due process of law is a cornerstone of constitutional protections and enshrined in the Fifth Amendment to ensure individuals have adequate legal safeguards, she wrote.
A state webpage updated in June further informs Vermonters about civil immigration enforcement at entry points. It states that enforcement officers may sometimes detain and question individuals about their immigration status without a warrant or evidence of any crime. It also states that individuals have the right to remain silent, ask authorities to identify themselves and also agree to obey an order without granting your consent.
At one point, Chavarria recalled, he was sitting on a metal chair with four officials towering over him, asking questions in what he said was an aggressive way. None of them had IDs or identified themselves to him, he said.
After four and a half hours of calmly repeating the same information, Chavarria said he was released and had no idea how long he had been questioned or what time it was.
Dudgeon, 36, who was waiting anxiously in the baggage area, also without any answers, said it was around 10:30 p.m. when Chavarria was released. They missed their connecting flight and had to spend the night in the airport.
A white man born in the U.S., Dudgeon said he felt powerless not knowing where Chavarria was being held and why. When he asked officials about Chavarria’s whereabouts, he said the communication felt “very dehumanizing” and “lacking compassion.” He said they aggressively shut him down and directed him to wait in the baggage area.
As he took the elevator down, Dudgeon said he saw three big posters advertising three immigration entities – Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection. ICE was depicted by a picture of two white men on horses galloping through a river that he said reminded him of a 2021 photo of agents shoving Haitian migrants toward the Rio Grande river bordering the U.S. and Mexico.
“It feels a little terrifying,” said Dudgeon, who works as a teacher in the Essex School District. “It’s state-mandated terror.”
‘My future is uncertain’
On Tuesday morning, Chavarria found out via email that his yearslong Global Entry pass that allows “expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers” through immigration, according to the Customs and Border Protection website, had been revoked. No reason was given.
Chavarria said his experience was an act of intimidation by a federal government carrying out its promise to crack down on immigration and an indication he will likely be subject to scrutiny during future travel.
A veteran traveler, Chavarria was born in a Honduran refugee camp and grew up in Nicaragua. He moved to Canada to complete high school and attended Earlham College in Indiana, where he studied cinematography and met Dudgeon. He holds two master’s degrees in education from the University of New Mexico and Harvard University.
Chavarria said he will reconsider making trips home to see his elderly mother. He said he must also reconsider what he can say to families in Winooski — many of whom are people of color and immigrants.
The concept of citizens not being allowed to visit their family is shocking for Dudgeon.
“I just feel anxious and sad that this is going to be a new reality for Wilmer whenever he wants to go home,” he said.
“I think my future is uncertain,” Chavarria said. “I think they are sending me a message. They’re saying we are giving ourselves permission to do this every time you visit your home, every time you see your mother we’re allowing ourselves to do this to you and you better watch out.”
This is not the first time the Chavarria family has been affected by the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
His brother, Dino Chavarria, who came to the U.S. in 2023 as part of a temporary parole program, was affected after the Department of Homeland Security issued a March 25 order to end the program. That order has since been upheld by the Supreme Court.
His brother’s family was among the half-million nationals nationwide from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who received the letter terminating parole. The government offered those who chose to self-deport $1,000. Chavarria said his family found it insulting and did not take it.
“They left before they became eligible for deportation because Trump gave them the April 24 deadline,” said Chavarria, who traveled with his nieces in April when they went back to Nicaragua.
Both attended Champlain Valley Union High School and their departure sparked an outpouring of support and anger in the community. The school organized an early graduation to give them their diplomas.
His latest brush at the airport has changed Chavarria’s stance as a superintendent whom scores of immigrant students and their families in Winooski look to for answers, particularly in the increasingly hostile immigration climate. He said he has always assured them if they have U.S. passports, they have constitutional rights and are safe to travel without fear. Now, he said, he needs to reframe the message.
“It’s not about immigration status really. It’s about being Black and brown immigrants,” he said.
Chavarria sent an email early Tuesday to school and district leadership informing them of the “extreme verbal and psychological ordeal” he and Dudgeon experienced.
“It’s been rough and this was a whole new territory of terror for me and my family,” he wrote.
In a statement sent Tuesday afternoon, the school board called him an “exemplary leader” and called on Vermont to stand in solidarity with him and for elected leaders and federal authorities to investigate the incident they said was “deeply disturbing and unacceptable.”
“While we are aware that such detentions are increasingly becoming more common across the country, we must be clear: this is not normal. It is wrong. It is inhumane. It is unjust,” the school board wrote in the statement.
Sanders: ‘Unacceptable’
U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., took to the U.S. House floor Tuesday night to express her outrage.
“We are furious because of what happened yesterday to a Vermonter, a U.S. citizen, as he attempted to return home,” she said. “This kind of violation of our constitutional rights is how leaders use terror to intimidate us into silence.”
While any period of detention is “significant, harmful and traumatizing,” Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said in an email that this incident is “truly outrageous and terrifying.”
“We all need to be vigilant and aware of these incidents so that we can, at the very least, highlight them and make sure that our community members don’t get kidnapped by our Government,” she wrote.
Rich wrote she is troubled by “the growing footprint of immigration enforcement in this country and its chilling effect on our freedom of movement.”
Meanwhile, area educators said they are “appalled at the unjust interrogation and detention” and condemned how Chavarria was treated in Houston, according to a joint statement from the Vermont-NEA, the state’s teachers union, and the Winooski Education Association, the union’s local chapter.
“As masked government agents snatch migrants from schools, hospitals, courtrooms, and places of employment and border officials unjustly detain citizens, we must reaffirm our support of all people who call America home,” the unions wrote in the statement.
Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, said such instances are on the rise.
“(The Department of Homeland Security) is dressing up otherwise illegal discrimination and ideological repression as legitimate and routine exercises of border enforcement,” they wrote in an email.
With more than decade of experience in immigration legal practice and education, Martin Diaz wrote in an email the system is “rooted in a history of bigotry, xenophobia, workforce exploitation, and ideological repression—a long and shameful history that has caused irreparable harm to millions of people, including people in Vermont.”
They said they hope Vermont can seize this moment to push for meaningful change to an immigration system that has long been broken — and fight these instances case by case.
American citizens are able to continue to travel beyond borders safely –– with extra precautions, Martin Diaz added, quoting the National Immigration Litigation Alliance to state, “Don’t concede, but don’t impede.”
“What happened to Wilmer is unacceptable,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: We are witnessing racial profiling by ICE and CBP across the country. This is another example of Trump’s reckless approach to immigration, of which the majority of Americans now disapprove. Now is the time for all of us to stand together against these dangerous and harmful policies.”
