The Winooski School District is calling for the rapid release of a second-grade student who was allegedly detained, with his mother, by federal immigration agents during the Thanksgiving break last week.
“They were traveling out of state, they made a wrong turn and were stopped and taken into ICE custody,” said Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria, who has since received information they are being held in a detention facility in Texas.
“We’ve had caregivers be detained and deported here in Winooski but we’ve never had one of our children be taken into custody by ICE,” he said Monday.
The two were arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, spokespersons from ICE confirmed on Tuesday.
“They are now at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas, formerly called the South Texas Family Residential Center, pending a hearing before an immigration judge who will decide if they can remain in the U.S. If ordered removed to their home country, ICE will conduct the removal,” Monica Yoas, a spokesperson from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an email.
CBP officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The most diverse school district in an otherwise predominantly white state, Winooski was the first in Vermont to pass a sanctuary school policy earlier this year to protect students and families from the impact of federal immigration enforcement actions.
Chavarria, an outspoken advocate for families there, said, “We know that there have been cases where the mother and the child are separated intentionally — and this would be the worst-case scenario. So we’re trying to get help as quickly as we can.”
That’s difficult to do, however, given the shortage of legal assistance in Vermont at a time when the Trump administration has amplified efforts to detain and deport immigrants. And the system is so overwhelmed that it allows federal authorities to “simply get away with disappearing a family,” Chavarria said.
“My team has had a hard time trying to find legal aid for these people,” Chavarria said.
Winooski has a rapid response system in place via which volunteers learned the mother and son were stopped and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week. They located them Monday at a detention facility in Texas, spoke briefly with the mother over the phone and provided $1,000 in emergency relocation support from a private fund to the child’s father, who remained at home in Winooski, according to Chavarria.
The 7-year-old boy who attends JFK Elementary was absent from school Monday morning. A teacher said she called his home to make sure he knew school was back in session after the holiday. That’s when she learned from the father that he has not been able to contact the boy and his mother since Thursday.
They were pulled over, likely in Illinois, while driving to Minneapolis during the holiday last week. “And he tells us that over the weekend he’s been just desperately trying to figure out where his wife and child are,” Chavarria said.
Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice, denounced the detention and commended the school district’s response to it.
“Since the start of the Trump administration, ICE and Border Patrol’s attacks against our community have exploded, with detentions in the state increasing more than tenfold,” he wrote in an email, adding, “Winooski is a model for how institutions in Vermont can respond to these unconscionable attacks.”
The Spanish-speaking family born in Ecuador recently moved to Winooski from Minneapolis. Chavarria said many of the district’s newer families came to the city because of its safe, inclusive environment to find “some sort of refuge here.”
“We’re trying to be as helpful as we can and we don’t expect this to be the outcome,” he said, adding that the district has been cautioning families to be extra vigilant in the current climate. “We are in dangerous times and we cannot live our lives as we usually would.”
The school district declined to identify the family. ICE did not immediately respond to comment.
“Our 2nd grader should be in his classroom, not in a detention cell,” Chavarria wrote on social media.
Chavarria, a U.S. citizen, was himself detained and interrogated by federal authorities in Texas for more than five hours while traveling back to Vermont after visiting family in Nicaragua in July.
He posted a message on the district’s social media page Monday afternoon strongly condemning the incident, calling for the Winooski family’s immediate release and for the federal government to bring back “basic humanity and due process.”
“This is yet another example of the terror our families face simply by doing things other people take for granted — going to school, shopping for groceries, or just visiting family,” he wrote.
This story has been updated to clarify that Customs and Border Protection initially detained the Winooski family, and added a comment from ICE.
