Officials are continuing to review an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement action in South Burlington last month that led to a confrontation with protesters.
Monday's city council meeting included an overview of police body camera footage of the incident.
The ICE enforcement action in South Burlington on March 11th began with a chase that caused a traffic accident and then moved to a home, where federal agents waited to receive a warrant to detain those inside.
Activists and others gathered peacefully throughout the day while South Burlington Police and other local and state law enforcement monitored the situation. When ICE received a warrant late in the day and broke down a door to detain three people, protesters tried to block the federal agents. That led to a violent altercation.
South Burlington City Manager Jessie Baker said a ‘trove’ of information was released last Thursday, including more than 60 hours of South Burlington Police Department body camera video.
“ICE pitted local and Vermont law enforcement between their agents and the community and did significant harm to the community in eroding the public trust. In the interest of trying to improve a shared understanding of what happened on March 11th we wanted to be as transparent as possible and put these documents forward to the community as well as all of the body-worn camera footage. We know it’s a lot. We know it’s really hard to watch.”
Baker said city police and other local agencies tried throughout the day to convince ICE and its Enforcement and Removal Operations to stop any execution of warrants and call off their actions and leave, but they refused.
“Once the U.S. district judge in Vermont approved a criminal warrant, ICE made it very clear that they were going to execute that warrant by using any means necessary. And as a result of that, Chief Breault made the decision to place local and state law enforcement officers between ICE and our neighbors on scene for the sole purpose of ensuring the safety of the community in the hopes of limiting physical harm.”
Police Chief Bill Breault said all his decisions were made in the best interest of public safety. Councilors asked him in retrospect if he should have done anything different.
“I think we underestimated the, for lack of a better term, incompetence of ICE and their inability to take a step back and the lack of leadership, in my opinion, that was displayed by ICE on scene. I underestimated that ever being as extreme as it was. There were a lot of things in hindsight. We weren’t prepared for it to go on as long as it did. When we lost daylight that completely changed the tenor of the crowd as well. And I underestimated the extremes that either ICE or the community was going to go to.”
Burlington resident Leif Taranta is a professional de-escalation and nonviolence trainer who is part of a group reviewing video from other sources, such as cell phones and the media.
“Through this work we’ve found a lot of evidence of South Burlington Police collaboration with ICE, failure to intervene in instances of excessive force, assisting ICE in the use of excessive force. Many clear violations of the fair and Impartial Policing policy.”
South Burlington resident Seamus Abshere said the evidence he has seen shows that that the South Burlington Police did their job.
“To everybody else, if you have a disagreement with ICE or current immigration policy you can’t solve that by protesting and then complaining about how you got shoved to the ground or disrespected. Instead, what’s needed is effective political action. In other words, play the long game. Focus on winning at the ballot box.”
Councilor Andrew Chalnick reported that an invitation has been extended to Migrant Justice to schedule a meeting on how to develop a better communication system between officials and protesters should a similar incident ever occur in the future.
“He’d like some feedback on the parameters of the meeting, the format of the meeting. He wants to make sure we start with accountability and asked whether the chief would be there and hopefully I’m setting up a discussion with them.”
Councilors hope to schedule a meeting with Migrant Justice with a restorative justice facilitator moderating it.
The Vermont State Police has also released an after-action report and body camera videos. A report from the city of Burlington is pending. Both agencies were also on site during the ICE raid.
