ST. ALBANS — A coalition of faith groups and local organizations from around the state gathered a crowd of more than 250 here to protest the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, two agencies that have been heavily involved in immigration detentions in Vermont and across the country.
The organizers had originally planned for the protest to culminate in a sit-in of about 50 people trained in nonviolent civil disobedience outside the Customs and Border Protection office in downtown St. Albans. But after hearing that the office had apparently been closed for the day, organizers instead read their demands in front of the building, and declared at least a partial victory.
“We were successful,” Paul Markowitz, one of the organizers of the protest, told a crowd gathered outside the CBP office. “One of our goals was to obstruct business as usual. Did we do that?”
“Yes!” the crowd roared.
The mood at the main protest in St. Albans’s Taylor Park was by turns celebratory and somber, as performances by a brass band, singers, and the legendary Bread and Puppet Theater gave way to a lengthy reading of the names of people who have died in ICE custody or during immigration enforcement actions.
As activists read the long list of names, a small handful of counterprotesters at the park’s edge blasted loud music from a car.
“I don’t want to hear the names of illegal immigrants!” a person shouted through a megaphone.
Counterprotester Ryan LaRose of Franklin said he was there to support ICE and disrupt the protest.
Organizers, meanwhile, said they were there to protect the rights of immigrants.
“For many of our faith traditions, care of the stranger and the immigrant is foremost in their belief system,” Jessica Moore, pastor at the First Congregational Church of St. Albans, told the gathered crowd.
The protest came nearly two months after a high-profile ICE raid in South Burlington, in which three people were detained after a nearly daylong standoff between agents and protesters. All three were later released. The involvement of state and local police in that action has been criticized in the months since.
In a list of demands that organizers said they shared with ICE and CBP officials prior to the protest, activists called on the agencies to operate within the bounds of the law and alleged that both agencies engage in racial profiling.
The demands also included calls for both agencies to have visible identification and stop covering their faces during enforcement actions.
Earlier this year, the Vermont Legislature was considering a bill that attempted to unmask federal immigration agents in Vermont, but the bill has since been gutted.
Organizers from the new statewide coalition, which calls itself the ICE Out Vermont Alliance, said Friday’s action was just the beginning of their push against ICE and CBP.
“This is a long fight,” said Ginny Sassaman of Calais, one of the event’s organizers.
“Is something going to change dramatically because of today? No,” she said. “The change is going to come because we keep doing this, we keep fighting and we keep showing up.”
