click to enlarge - Courtesy: Migrant Justice
- Cesar Alex Carrillo, left, with his young daughter and wife, leading a 2016 march to urge the release of a migrant worker.
Immigration agents arrested a veteran Vermont dairy worker from Mexico on Wednesday outside a Burlington courthouse as he headed to a hearing for a driving under the influence arrest, according to a human rights organization.
Cesar Alex Carrillo, 23, faces deportation after his arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers outside the Edward J. Costello Courthouse, according to Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based group led by immigrant dairy farmworkers.
Carrillo is married to a U.S. citizen who is pregnant with their second child, according to Migrant Justice.
"When they arrested Alex, they took away a father, a husband, a human being," his wife, Lymarie Deida, said in a statement released by the group. Deida and Carrillo have a 4-year old daughter.
During the hearing that brought Carrillo to the courthouse, prosecutors dismissed a DUI charge stemming from a 2016 arrest, though he was not present, Migrant Justice said.
Migrant Justice spokesman Will Lambek said that Carrillo was arrested as he looked for parking near the courthouse.
"They seemed to be waiting for him," Lambek said.
Carrillo was being held on $21,000 bail and will have a court hearing in two or three weeks, Lambek said. Migrant Justice is demanding that ICE release Carrillo.
Carrillo's supporters said his arrest stems from President Donald Trump's executive orders to prioritize
the removal of immigrants who have been charged with a crime, even if they haven't been convicted.
"ICE has long stayed away from courthouses and other sensitive locations, for good reason: If people are afraid to go to court, our system of justice is compromised," American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont executive director James Lyall said. "This arrest isn't just an attack on the immigrant community — it's also an attack on the legal system itself."
An ICE spokesman released a brief statement via email:
On March 15, ICE officers arrested 23-year-old Cesar Alexis Carrillo-Sanchez, a citizen of Mexico, following a targeted vehicle stop in Chittenden County. Carrillo-Sanchez claims to have unlawfully entered the United States in 2010 and is currently in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
Carrillo, who has lived in Vermont for seven years, came to the United States when he was 16 years old and soon began working on dairy farms, Migrant Justice said. Carrillo is active in Migrant Justice.
"Trump's new deportation policy inhumanely tears apart families and communities," said Joan Javier-Duval, a reverend of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier. "The arrest of Alex Carillo will only cause more fear within Vermont's immigrant farmworker community and cause more people to live in the shadows."
The arrest comes a year after ICE arrested dairy worker and
Migrant Justice spokesperson Victor Diaz. Advocates, including Carrillo, rallied to Diaz's defense, and ICE eventually released him.
Staff writer Katie Jickling contributed to this report.