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Winooski School District superintendent discusses detention by federal agents in Texas

Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria
Winooski School District
Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria

Wilmer Chavarria has been a naturalized citizen of the U.S. since 2018 and the superintendent of the Winooski, Vermont School District for two years. Last week, as he returned from a visit to his family in Nicaragua, he was detained at the Houston airport and questioned for nearly 5 hours. Chavarria tells WAMC North County Bureau Chief Pat Bradley he is still shaken from the encounter during which he says federal agents told him he had no rights.

I was escorted into first a room with other people that were detained that clearly had been there for a long time, because some of them were in recliners with metallic blankets in a very cold room. But then eventually, I was taken to a different area where there was no one else there. It was just a bunch of smaller interrogation rooms, but no one else was there. I was alone there. And at this point it was all officers in civilian clothes, in plain clothes, with the exception of a an officer that had a suit on, a woman that was wearing a suit. And then I was asked lots of questions. One of the first things they did was to ask for all of my electronic devices and for me to give them the passwords and pins to which I replied I consent to a search of my personal data and files, but I do not consent to opening district databases or information that may relate to student and/or family information that is protected by privacy laws. This caused a lot of anger and frustration on the part of the four or five different officers that were questioning me, and it took a long time until they could understand that I could not consent for them to look at district files, but they were welcome to look at my personal files. A lot of questions were asked, from questioning the validity of my marriage, asking me if I was legally married. Even though they have on file, they have my marriage license among almost everything else about my life, because I've been I'm an immigrant and when you're an immigrant they collect anything and everything about you in your life. And your marriage license is one of the main things that they have. And I've been married to my spouse for 13 years, been together for 15 years. There's plenty of documentation on us. But that was questioned from like, how we met, to you know what we do in our life. But also question my work as a superintendent. They demanded numbers for my boss. I said I don't have a boss but I have a board of trustees. You're welcome to call them. They demanded numbers, but didn't want to let me use my phone, so I had to do my best to recall phone numbers, which is hard to do because we don't normally memorize our contact list. They denied me access to our district legal counsel because I said I will not provide family or student information if you don't have a judicial warrant even if you're a federal agent, or at the very least, I should consult with our district legal counsel to allow me to show you those files, because otherwise I would be violating federal law. They did not want to accept that for a while. For a long time, I continued to be questioned around that and the night continued to go on. I was not allowed access to a clock so I wouldn't have known how much time had passed, but by the time I got out, it had been at least four and a half hours, if not five.

 

Superintendent Chavarria, why did you have district information on your devices? My understanding is you had gone down to Nicaragua to visit family.

 
Yes. A superintendent's work doesn't end when you leave the office. In fact, you're supposed to be on 24/7. I'm not able to do my work without my laptop. So in fact, while I was at my mother's house, I would wake up and start working right away and not stop working until at least at noon, and then maybe do stuff in the garden, cook with my mother and stuff like that. But every day I was working. So it's a pretty common thing. It's to be expected. A superintendent is not supposed to just disconnect for all sorts of reasons. And so it's nothing unusual.

You mentioned that the agents that detained you weren't telling you anything. They were asking you question after question. They seem to have withheld your basic citizenship rights, not even allowing you to have a lawyer. Yet, you said they knew pretty much your entire history because you are an immigrant to the country. How did they rectify withholding your basic rights versus your citizenship status?

 

I asked that question and one of the most unbelievable moments of the night was when I had to go quiet because of the answer of an officer. At some point, four of them were standing above me while I was sitting down. Four officers were just talking at me and telling me all sorts of things, including threats of making me lose my job and reporting me to the FBI. And I asked, I am a US citizen, I have constitutional rights. And one of them said stop talking about rights. You're at a point of entry. You do not have any constitutional rights here, which is inaccurate, but that is what they believe.

 

When did you find out that the school board was supporting you and how important has that been?

The support has been overwhelming. Our own District Board of Education, the State Board of Education, the different state offices like the state treasurer, or the associations, the NEA, the School Boards Association, the Vermont Superintendents Association, they all came out pretty quickly condemning the situation. And that amount of support reminded me that the way I felt about this whole thing was justified. I think there was something deeply wrong with what had just happened and I'm pretty sure I was not just imagining that. And I think the moment people heard the details of what had happened, people, rightfully so, felt outraged about it and so I felt validated at least on that end. And the support has been amazing. Coming to Vermont feels like coming home because I feel like I'm a little safer and I know that they have my back, and I know the community in Winooski is fully behind me. I continue to receive messages of support.

 
Superintendent Chavarria, you are the leader of the state's probably most diverse school district and I'm curious how this will affect how you will interact with your students. You know, what sorts of things you'll be telling them and what kind of concerns you anticipate from them in the wake of this.

 

Yeah, it was actually a pretty normal thing for me to answering questions from our students, especially from families who are immigrants and students of color, students who speak English as a second language. But I'm going to have to change my message a little bit because I used to tell whenever I asked students if they were US citizens or if they had a US passport, I used to tell them then you have nothing to worry about. You should be able to travel just fine. There are rights that you have that should not be violated, like you should not be in fear. I think I'm going to have to curate that message a little bit more because I don't want to lie to my students. I don’t want to make them believe that they are safe when really we are not. I think that having a US passport or being a US citizen is no longer a guarantee of your rights and it would be hypocritical for me to say otherwise.

 

Well, Superintendent Chavarria, this incident occurred about a week ago now and I had read that you were shaken by this. Now that it's a week on how are you doing?

 

I'm still shaken. I think it's hard to shake it off especially because more and more things continue to happen. Remember I was threatened with losing my job and not being able to get another one. I don't know what they meant by that. I know that my board, for example, just received a very strange email with somebody who created a fake email account telling them to go and look into my devices because they should be suspicious of me and sowing that distrust in the board and probably other players will continue to sow distrust with the community. When I look at the social media, or the comments being made in the in the media publications and people calling me all sorts of insults because of the fact that I'm married to my spouse and that we're not a traditional couple, it is very disheartening. And some people saying that I should not be allowed to be close to children when my life's work has been to protect children is very disheartening. And so if anything, I don't think I'm any better than I was at the time. My future is very uncertain. It is very concerning, especially not knowing what people are up to, how I ended up even in some sort of watch list and what that means for my future travel. But also just my future existence, being able to exist in the United States without being harassed. It is very concerning and I hope that I can eventually learn to live with it because I'm not planning to be silenced by it. I plan to continue to work toward justice for our communities and everybody, every student under our care. I don't want to live under fear. I don't want to do any less work than I have already been doing just because I'm afraid somebody will punish me for it.

 

Responding to a request for comment, an email from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson states in part: “All travelers entering the United States are subject to inspection, a process that can take time depending on the circumstances. These essential inspections safeguard national security. CBP cannot disclose information that could compromise law enforcement intelligence. We treat travelers with dignity and respect....”