WILLISTON — More than 100 people gathered outside a national U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement intelligence hub in Williston Sunday afternoon to protest ICE’s plans to build out its surveillance capabilities at a nearby office in the same town.
The protest was organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a national, anti-capitalist political movement with a chapter in Vermont. Speakers decried ICE’s plans, laid out in federal contracting records, made public earlier this month, to hire at least a dozen contracted workers at the agency’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center. It uses intelligence-gathering networks to generate leads for immigration enforcement agents operating across the eastern U.S.
Demonstrators gathered in the middle of Harvest Lane, the road that runs in front of ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center — a facility that houses a national ICE tip line — with local police routing traffic around them.
Across the street from that center is another building run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security which, on Saturday morning, was vandalized with threatening graffiti that appeared aimed at federal workers. The vandalized building was cordoned off by police tape on Sunday afternoon while the protest was taking place.
Cora Honigford, one of the protest’s organizers, said the group was not responsible for the graffiti and had no information about who had done it. Local and federal law enforcement were beginning to investigate the vandalism on Sunday.
The National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which is where the plans that sparked Sunday’s protest would be based, is located about 1.5 miles away from where the demonstration took place and the site of the vandalized building.
Contractors at the targeting center would use social media platforms and online databases to help federal agents locate people who could be facing deportation, as well as friends and coworkers of those people, according to federal records. The plans are preliminary but say work could start as early as May 2026.
“We need to tell ICE our message that their surveillance will not slow us down. It will not stop us. It will only bring us out stronger,” said Honigford, who’s from South Royalton, in remarks to the crowd, drawing loud cheers.
Protestors held signs bearing slogans such as “No ICE Surveillance” and “ICE Fuera,” using the Spanish word for “out.” They chanted, among other refrains, “No justice, no peace! No ICE or police!”
Several speakers described ICE’s plans for social media surveillance in Williston as an escalation in the agency’s operations on top of the sharp increase in immigration enforcement that has defined President Donald Trump’s second term. The proposed surveillance is likely to target people already impacted by that enforcement the most, said Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, a legal advocacy network for immigrants.
“Make no mistake, that the primary targets for this enforcement would be our Black and brown neighbors, who are advocates for their own dignity,” Paarlberg-Kvam told her fellow demonstrators.
Michelle and Scott Stinson traveled up to Williston for the demonstration from Ludlow. Michelle held an upside-down American flag, which she said was a protest against ICE’s actions and future plans in the state.
“This is wrong,” she said of the proposed surveillance. “They should not be using us as a hub — for anything.”
