Two South Burlington residents have filed federal claims against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alleging agents used excessive force and unlawfully detained them during a botched March 11 immigration raid.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont filed the claims Wednesday on behalf of José Estrada Jerez, a U.S. citizen, and Jisella Johana Patin Patin, who goes by Johana and is an asylum seeker, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the first step toward a lawsuit seeking financial damages from the federal government.
The claims accuse ICE agents of excessive force and false imprisonment after they entered the home the pair shared. The agents were executing a search warrant for another man.
“It is always true in so many of our cases that money will never make our plaintiffs whole,” said Monica Allard, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Vermont. “It will never fix the harm that has happened to them, but it can be a powerful tool for accountability when it comes to government actions.”
The two Vermont cases are part of a nationwide campaign facilitated by the ACLU that the organization says seeks to hold ICE and other federal authorities accountable for their actions. Across 17 states and Washington D.C., the ACLU has filed 54 legal claims in recent months targeting civil rights violations, excessive force and unlawful home raids by federal immigration agents.
“When there’s a sort of coordinated effort on behalf of the government to terrorize broad swaths of our population, we need a coordinated response,” Allard said.
ICE did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
What happened?
During the immigration raid, Jerez and Patin Patin were sheltered inside their home with Jerez’s uncle, Patin Patin’s 4-year-old daughter and Patin Patin’s sister when ICE agents surrounded the property.
Hundreds of protesters, along with over 60 federal, state and local law enforcement officials, gathered around the house as the day went on.
After ICE broke down the door with a battering ram, Jerez and his uncle were found on the floor with their hands raised, while Patin Patin and her sister were hiding in her room, they said in the ACLU’s account of the raid.
Patin Patin’s daughter was safely removed from the home with the help of other adults outside the house before the agents entered.
“The government is doing everything that it can to make us feel afraid, to make us feel small, and to try to push us into the shadows,” Jerez said in a press release from the ACLU of Vermont. “But people should look at what happened on March 11 and see not only the trauma we faced, but also how powerful our community is when it stands together.”
The ICE agents threatened to use tear gas inside the house in search of the wanted man, flipping mattresses and busting down doors, according to the ACLU account. The chaos escalated, the account says, when an officer’s foot broke through the attic floor and his weapon discharged.
Jerez was left alone in the aftermath of the raid, as his uncle, Patin Patin and her sister were taken by ICE agents. Patin Patin was imprisoned for five days before being released on bail by U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford.
“I hope that people who hear my story will understand that no one should live in fear that the government will separate them from their children, physically harm them, or throw them in prison based only on false stereotypes about immigrants and people from Spanish-speaking countries,” Patin Patin said in the press release. “I think the people of Vermont would agree that we all deserve better.”
Moving forward
Along with the ACLU of Vermont, Patin Patin is being represented by Montroll, Oettinger, & Barquist PC, and Jerez by Nathan Virag Law.
“Agents had no business terrorizing her and her family, yet they decided to anyway,” Kristen Connors, one of Patin Patin’s lawyers, said in the ACLU press release. “This lawless mass deportation campaign endangers us all, and especially our immigrant neighbors.”
Allard of the ACLU said her organization is ready to use “every tool in our tool belt” to combat the actions of the federal authorities and the damage that she says was done to Jerez and Patin Patin’s home that day.
The claims filed Wednesday are the first step in bringing a lawsuit against ICE under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Now, the defendants will have to wait six months or until ICE either accepts the claim, rejects it or negotiates a settlement.
Allard said they are prepared to wait.
“Both Joanna and José were deeply impacted by the actions of ICE on March 11th and afterwards, and they will carry this with them for a long time,” Allard said.
