As Vermont legislators consider a host of important bills to manage state affairs, they would be wise to also reconsider how to protect Vermonters in the near-certain event that ICE and CBP officers initiate an immigration sweep through the state. As seen in several other blue states, actions by ICE and CBP agents have too often been unwarranted, illegal, unnecessarily brutal and a threat to the communities they invade.

With protests likely, the Vermont legislature should discuss, pass and put into action as soon as possible bills to make federal agents pause before they violate basic civil laws and the individual rights of Vermonters.

The Senate has already considered two bills: S.209 and S.208. The first would prevent civil arrests at schools, government buildings, health care facilities and what the bill calls community-based shelters, severe weather shelters and emergency housing. The second bill attempts to restrict when law enforcement officers can wear masks and requires officers to identify themselves verbally or by an obvious badge. 

Both are reasonable places to start, but more could be done.

In Colorado, a bill there would enable individuals to sue federal law enforcement officials for civil rights violations. Similar bills, under legislation known as “universal constitutional remedies” that allow individuals to sue any local, state or federal official when their constitutional rights are violated, are also being proposed in California, Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Virginia, among others.

In California, a lawmaker is sponsoring two bills, one to require any shooting by ICE or CBP agents be subject to an independent state investigation, and another to bar ICE or CBP agents from using state properties as staging areas.

Minnesota, whose state legislature opens on Feb. 17, will be seeking to require federal agents to meet the same kind of training requirements now in place for local law enforcement, including providing first aid. (ICE agents appeared to reject offers to aid Renee Good after she was shot and killed at close range by an ICE agent. ICE officers also refused to allow a man, who identified himself as a doctor, to help Good at the scene, according to a New York Times report.)

While state efforts to restrict federal agents to enforce immigration laws will undoubtedly be challenged by the Trump administration, Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, who sits on the judiciary committee, acknowledged that likelihood but said Vermont should join other states to defend the individual rights of its citizens.

“We have to be proactive about that, because I will bet you every cent I have that within the year, Burlington and Winooski will see raids,” Baruth said in a VtDigger report, adding that he was comfortable supporting bills the Trump administration might challenge in court. “We’re kind of fighting with our backs to the wall as states.”

REVAMPING ICE AND CBP

While Vermont should do what it can this session, over the next 10 days Democrats in Congress will be arguing to implement the most necessary reforms possible for ICE and the CBP ahead of a vote on future funding for the Department of Homeland Security. In his newsletter, Doomsday Scenario, covering national security and geopolitics through history, Vermont journalist Garrett Graff outlines several specific concerns that need addressing in those talks. Here’s a brief account of his much longer points:

• 1) Basic Uniform and Identification Standards. “There should be no doubt who is a federal agent and who isn’t,” Graff writes. “Too many times ICE officers and CBP agents are showing up in our communities as indistinguishable from Proud Boys, bounty hunters, or merely even ‘open carry’ enthusiasts.

• 2) Use of Force:  “I would love to see real restrictions on CBP and ICE’s use of chemical agents, like tear gas, pepper spray, and less lethal munitions like so-called rubber bullets or pepper balls more like the actually dangerous tools they are. In particular, I’d like to see CBP and ICE removed from ‘crowd control’ operations against protesters. There are other agencies that are better trained at such crowd control and protest policing.”

3) Enforcement Standards and Restrictions: “One of the most useful things Congress could do is a host of reforms aimed at re-drawing where and how enforcement operations can unfold… Looking ahead Congress should mandate that no ICE or immigration enforcement can occur near polling places on election day… Take away the threat that Donald Trump is going to turbocharge 20,000 ICE officers to set up checkpoints near polling places or stage large-scale raids in minority-majority congressional districts during polling hours in November. And anyone who says “there aren’t enough ICE agents” to make a difference in a national election misunderstands how this would work — you don’t need to ‘patrol’ or scare off voters at every polling place. Control of Congress will be decided by a small number of swing districts; deploying 100-200 agents apiece into just 15-20 congressional districts and urban polling places would probably be all they need to do it.”

4) Hiring Standards and Training: “Congress should mandate basic hiring and training standards that at least guarantee ICE officers and CBP agents meet the standards of other federal law enforcement agencies.”

5) Detention Facilities: “Any deal Congress passes must include codifying and clarifying that members of Congress have on-demand access to any immigration detention facility. ICE has played fast and loose skirting congressional oversight and access over the last year, and two separate court orders have had to reaffirm that House and Senate members can conduct no-notice inspections.” It’s also clear, Graff writes, “that the Trump administration plans the next phases of its immigration enforcement to not work in the traditional systems of due process for migrants. We can tell because (the) giant increases in officers, arrest quotas, and detention facilities are balanced with only the most modest of modest increases to the number of immigration judges in the country — a rise from 700 to 800, an increase so out-of-scale to the problem that we could have used those extra 100 to work through the existing backlog from the Biden years.

“If the Trump administration had any plan to balance civil rights and due process with its giant new hiring and construction spree, it would be also tripling or quadrupling or quintupling the new immigration judges. The fact that it’s not doing so makes clear that the Trump administration, DHS, and DOJ have no intention of normal due process.”

Graff continues his column by recommending a complete overhaul of the Department of Homeland Security, presumably when Democrats regain control of the White House and Congress, saying that “America cannot survive as a free society if ICE and CBP continue to operate as they have over the last year — let alone as both agencies are turbocharged and empowered with even more funding, more officers, more guns, and more arrests.”

Read Graff’s full column here.

Angelo Lynn