A string of violent incidents involving U.S. immigration agents in Minneapolis has prompted Vermont officials and local organizers to prepare in case a similar enforcement surge is aimed at the Green Mountain State.
While Vermont has not been the target of a large-scale operation like recent ones in Maine or Minnesota, the feds are already here. Early last month, for instance, a Somali cab driver was detained while working outside Burlington International Airport. But the threat of a larger-scale operation has galvanized Vermonters, whose preparations have assumed a greater sense of urgency.
Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak met with the city’s police and fire chiefs last week to discuss how to respond if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descend on the city. State lawmakers are considering bills that would curb the power of those agents. And immigration advocates and attorneys held a virtual training last week, attended by more than 1,000 people, to organize their response in anticipation of a Minneapolis-like operation here.
Detentions are already happening, and they are going to happen.
Emma Matters-Wood
“Detentions are already happening, and they are going to happen,” Emma Matters-Wood, an attorney with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, told attendees. “The best thing we can do is be as prepared as possible to support people leading up to, and in the event of, a detention occurring.”
She encouraged immigrants to carry copies of their identification and proof of employment and to talk with a lawyer — if they have one — to plan a course of action in case they’re detained. But she also noted that the spike in arrests over the past year already has immigration attorneys in Vermont stretched thin.
“I want to prepare folks for the inevitability that not everyone will be able to access an immigration attorney,” she said. “That is the reality — there’s simply not enough to respond to the volume of need.”
The advocacy group Migrant Justice, which manages an emergency hotline and responds to reports of immigration arrests, tallied 107 immigration detentions across the state in 2025, compared to just 10 the year before.
The group has been hosting “rapid response” training almost every week since Trump reassumed the presidency promising a mass deportation campaign. It has also built up a network of about 2,000 people who follow up on reports of ICE sightings, support families whose relatives have been detained and connect them with legal help.
Other mutual aid groups have helped immigrant families by delivering groceries, driving children to and from school, and accompanying people to doctor’s appointments.
“We’re in a pretty special situation here in part because the immigrant community in Vermont is so deeply organized and has been for a long time,” Rachel Elliott, a Migrant Justice staff member, said during the virtual training. “We have protections here in the state of Vermont that do not exist in other areas to the same degree. That’s something to be deeply proud of and find hope in and be inspired by.”
Those protections include a statewide Fair and Impartial Policing Policy that forbids police departments in Vermont from collaborating with federal immigration authorities. Lawmakers passed a law in 2016 directing the Vermont Criminal Justice Council to develop the policy after the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont and Migrant Justice argued for it.
The group plans to hold more training sessions in the coming weeks and is trying to expand its rapid response network “as much as we can,” Elliott said. “The goal with rapid response is to be able to show up quickly and provide support in moments of crisis and to be able to document what’s going on.”
Elected officials are preparing, too. At the Burlington City Council meeting on January 26, Mulvaney-Stanak said she was connecting with mayors across the country to inform local planning in case immigration agents show up en masse in the Queen City.
“Stay steady, Burlington,” she said. “We are preparing, we are tracking what is happening in other parts of this country, and we will do everything we can to keep all our residents safe and protected from dangerous actions and overreach by the federal administration.”
Late last week, amid escalating fears of an expanded ICE foray into Vermont, rumors began to spread that federal agents had booked hotel rooms in the Burlington area. That prompted Mulvaney-Stanak to issue a statement titled “Status of ICE Operations” that disputed the rumor.
“City officials urge residents to avoid sharing unverified information, which can increase fear and divert emergency resources,” the mayor wrote. “Calls to 911 or police dispatch should be reserved for health, safety, or other emergencies.”
Mulvaney-Stanak also announced the launch of a web page on which the city would post resources and credible information about the presence of ICE. She noted that city officials would not receive prior notice of a federal enforcement operation and reminded residents of the legal limits to local authority.
“It is important to note,” she wrote, that while the Burlington Police Department “will not help ICE agents in civil enforcement matters, they are prohibited by law from impeding ICE actions.”
State legislators, meanwhile, are weighing several bills in response to the Trump administration’s deportation drive.
S.208 would prohibit all law enforcement agents — state and federal — from wearing masks or disguises, with exceptions for certain hazardous conditions such as freezing temperatures or smoke exposure. S.209 would prohibit civil arrests from being made in “sensitive locations” such as government buildings, schools, shelters and health care facilities.
And H.742 would create a state fund to provide legal representation for immigration detainees in Vermont. Unlike people charged with a crime, those detained for alleged immigration violations under civil code do not have a right to a lawyer at the government’s expense.
At a January 21 Statehouse press conference about the bills, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (P/D-Chittenden-Central), acknowledged the “very real restraints” represented by the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that federal laws take precedence over state laws with which they conflict.
“I have been frustrated with how little we can do, and I and our judiciary committee have worked hard to find the needle of what we can do to offer real protection in Vermont,” she said.
The bills have yet to move much, though, and would need to get past Gov. Phil Scott, a moderate Republican.
Scott has been reluctant over the past year to take a firm stand against the Trump administration. But the day after federal agents in Minneapolis killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and ICU nurse, the governor released a statement condemning the violence and urging a “reset” of immigration enforcement.
A few days later, at a Statehouse press conference, Scott adopted a softer stance, though he continued to urge the president to “tone down” and “de-escalate” his approach. When asked about the pending bills, Scott said he supported prohibiting masks for law enforcement but would need to see more details before signing off.
The supremacy clause also makes it difficult to prosecute federal agents for alleged constitutional violations. But prosecutors around the country are banding together to respond to concerns about warrantless arrests and unlawful detentions.
Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said she is in regular contact with prosecutors in other states about sharing resources and the potential challenges of suing federal agents.
“My record has shown that I hold law enforcement accountable when our laws allow for it and justice requires it, and that absolutely applies to federal agents who violate Vermont law,” George wrote in an email to Seven Days.
The preparations have extended to schools, where educators and administrators are considering the possibility that agents could try to detain students or parents on campus.
In the South Burlington School District, teachers are not to engage with ICE agents and should notify administrators immediately if any show up, according to Monica Desrochers, an administrator who oversees multilingual programming.
That has yet to happen, she said, but school staff have had to comfort students whose parents have been detained.
Winooski Schools superintendent Wilmer Chavarria runs the most diverse district in the state, where about 9 percent of students are Somali. Immigrants from the East African country have been a particular target of the Trump administration in recent months. After the president called Somalis “garbage,” Chavarria’s district flew a Somali flag in December to show solidarity with the immigrants. Video of the flag raising spread online, and hateful and threatening calls poured in from around the country.
“Given recent events, both nationally and here in Vermont, it is understandable that members of our school community are experiencing concern and anxiety,” Chavarria wrote in an email to Seven Days.
The district has “strong safety protocols” in place, he said, and administrators meet and communicate regularly “to ensure we remain prepared, responsive, and focused on student wellbeing.”
On the day Pretti was fatally shot by immigration agents, Rev. Karen G. Johnston was on a plane back to Burlington after having joined protesters in Minneapolis for several days.
Johnston, a senior minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, said she and about a dozen other Vermonters had responded to a national call for clergy around the country to convene in the Minnesota city.
She attended a protest at the Minneapolis airport, where about 100 clergy were arrested for trespassing. And she marched with tens of thousands through the streets, carrying a sign that said, “Vermont Stands With MN.”
“I responded to the call because I already see here in Vermont the ways in which excessive overreach and fear is impacting my neighbors, our neighbors,” Johnston said. “I’ve accompanied people to their ICE appointments in St. Albans. They live in deep fear all the time.”
Johnston was struck by how well organized the activist and mutual aid groups were in Minneapolis. It was clear that they were building on years of work, she said, not dissimilar to the aid networks and “deep veins of community care” that exist across Vermont — networks she thinks need to be strengthened now.
“The resilience and resistance in Minneapolis will help us learn how to respond when the same threats come to other communities — including to our own,” Johnston said. “Resistance against authoritarianism in our midst has to be prepared. It can’t be spontaneous. It needs to be sustained.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Plan of Action | Vermonters brace themselves for the possibility that federal immigration officials target them next”
This article appears in Love & Marriage Issue • 2026.
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