Activists ramped up their objections to federal immigration enforcement this week by dropping a bright yellow banner at a Williston business park where a digital surveillance operation run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials is located.
The banner, spread out across six windows of a building in the White Cap Business Park, read “ICE Violates Rights Here.” It was dropped on the night of Jan. 11 and removed by a cherry picker in the early morning hours of Jan. 12, according to activists who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
“ICE is currently using this office to spy on innocent people across the country and identify targets for kidnapping and deportation,” the anonymous activists wrote in a statement sent to VTDigger.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
The banner drop came four days after Renee Good, a mother in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was fatally shot by an ICE agent while driving her vehicle on Jan. 7. Protesters gathered in communities across Vermont over the weekend as part of nationwide “ICE Out for Good” vigils.
Activists who asked to remain anonymous said the banner drop was in response to the death of Good, along with Keith Porter, who was shot by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve, and the 32 deaths that have happened in ICE custody since January.
The killing of Good, a U.S. citizen, took place during what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has called “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever,” when roughly 2,000 federal agents were sent to Minneapolis earlier this month. During President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE has become the largest and best-funded federal law enforcement agency in the country.
The expansion has led to a growth at ICE offices in Vermont. The Williston facility houses the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which runs investigations including social media surveillance on the East Coast, while a similar facility, the Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Santa Ana, California, gathers intelligence on the West Coast. Personnel in the offices collect data from publicly accessible sources like social media to help ICE officials target individuals for arrest, according to a federal work order filed in October.
The banner came after a series of noise demonstrations outside the office meant to disrupt ICE surveillance work, according to activists. On an early morning in November, activists sounded their car alarms every 90 seconds, mimicking the rate of ICE arrests that happen every minute and a half, according to a flyer for the event.
Two more noise demonstrations happened in December — the second captured on a social media account by the Party for Social Liberation — and were organized by other groups including Migrant Justice and the Green Mountain Democratic Socialists of America. Participation in the noise actions has ranged from small groups of 30 to large groups of about 300, according to Vivan Bose-Pyne, a member of the Party for Social Liberation who helped organize the demonstrations but said they were not involved in the banner drop.
“ICE has provided no response,” Bose-Pyne said. “They are aware that with enough public pressure they will not be able to carry out their goals.”
Bose-Pyne said activists had been talking with building management and tenants, and have been told that ICE has a long-term contract.
“(We) will continue the pressure on the landlord, the town of Williston and public officials, and the mass public to shut it down,” they said.
The building is not the first in Vermont that’s been targeted by people dissatisfied with federal immigration enforcement actions.
In October, a Homeland Security building on Harvest Lane in Williston was vandalized with graffiti that included violent phrases like “shoot yourselves” and “die.” The graffiti came about a week after news broke of the department’s plans to expand digital surveillance in Williston. The Harvest Lane facility was thought to be used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to reporting by The Boston Globe.
The White Cap Business Park, less than 2 miles from Harvest Lane, also houses the Burlington District Office for the Vermont Department for Children and Families, along with a cafe, a bicycle tour operator, and a gym, among other businesses.
Protesters have been calling the management agent for the White Cap facility and asking them to cancel the lease. The management agent did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
