A recent surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Vermont has targeted roofing and construction workers. That's according to reporting in Seven Days by Lucy Tompkins, who discussed the issue with WAMC's Andrew Waite.
Andrew Waite: I wanted to start basically as your article does with Mary Richards. She was looking for contractors basically to replace a leaking roof on her 160-year-old farmhouse. She struggled to find contractors. Then she found a local roofing company. But what happened?
Lucy Tompkins: So, a crew of roofers came and started working on her roof on a Friday, I believe, and then the next day, Saturday, she looked outside her window around noon and noticed three SUVs parked out front with tinted windows. And then she ran outside and found a group of ICE agents in her yard, who had pulled up to detain some of the roofers working on her house. The roofers all scattered. Some of them hid in a tree next to her house, but ICE agents detained two of the workers.
Andrew Waite: And this is the kind of thing that's been happening a good bit in Vermont, right? What has your reporting found on that front?
Lucy Tompkins: Yeah, this has been a pattern since the Trump administration took over and has been trying to really ramp up deportation efforts. We've seen quite a few raids on construction and roofing crews in Vermont. Some of these raids have been led by Border Patrol, particularly last year, but just in the last couple months, there's been a spate of ICE raids on crews.
Andrew Waite: And why roofing crews? Why have they been targeted? Do you think?
Lucy Tompkins: I think it in part has to do with just the nature of the work, which is very exposed. The workers have to drive to and from their job sites, so they are easier targets for traffic stops. They often might stop at a gas station or a coffee shop in the morning, where sometimes people call in and report them to ICE. That's been the cause of at least one raid here, but also sometimes just an ICE agent driving by will spot them, and that can trigger a raid. And that was the case for Mary Richards.
Andrew Waite: And partly, though, it's to do with a changing demographic of who is doing this work, right? Like you've seen that, and that's what your reporting found a bit. Can you explain that a little bit?
Lucy Tompkins: Yeah, that's right. The construction industry in Vermont has suffered from a labor shortage for a long time. That's true of a lot of industries in Vermont, but I think this has gotten particularly acute here. And in the last few years, we've seen a lot more migrant workers, immigrant workers coming up to work in these industries.
Andrew Waite: And actually being recruited in some instances, it sounds like.
Lucy Tompkins: Right. Yeah. There was one company that put out a statement recently after one of their crews was raided, saying that they've had such a hard time finding workers that they actually went down to Texas to recruit a team to come up to Vermont.
Andrew Waite: So you have really a changing demographics of workforce where potentially this is work being done increasingly by maybe people who are undocumented. You have the nature of the work where they're, I mean, almost literally sitting ducks on the top of a roof, and so it's just made them very easy to exploit for ICE to be able to come in and detain people who are doing this work.
Lucy Tompkins: Yeah, I think so. You know, in terms of sort of larger workplace raids, this is the industry that's really been hit the hardest in Vermont. It's not the only industry that relies on migrant labor. Our dairy farms are mostly staffed by Mexican, largely undocumented workers, but I think it's been pretty politically unpopular for raids to target farms, so we haven't really seen that happening. And instead, it's been these roofing crews.
Andrew Waite: And do you have a sense of how often this is happening?
Lucy Tompkins: There is an advocacy group here called Migrant Justice, which is often the first point of contact for people who've been detained. They really have their ear to the ground. They've counted this year 13 different enforcement actions on roofing and construction crews, and that could be traffic stops or these raids on a job site.
Andrew Waite: And you reported on a few different stories. I'm wondering if there's a story you could share that is emblematic of what's been happening.
Lucy Tompkins: Yeah, in August there was a crew of largely Ecuadorian roofers, which is a group that's really grown in this industry here. A lot of the roofers I've spoken to have been from Ecuador. They came up during the Biden administration to request asylum. Many of them are kind of in that process, which can take years. So I spoke to one worker who was driving to a job site with his crew. He got pulled over on the way to the job site, and a bunch of ICE agents came and detained all five of them, and they were taken to a detention center out of state. They all managed to get some legal help and got a bond hearing with an immigration judge, and all five have actually been released. But this is common where workers will be driving to or from a job site, and ICE has maybe already been surveilling their movements.
Andrew Waite: And then, what do you think will change this? What are people talking about in terms of action responding to this, or is there a conversation in the community that's happening about where Vermont's construction industry goes from here? What's next for this situation that kind of keeps happening?
Lucy Tompkins: I think there are several different perspectives on this. One is that companies should be doing more to know the legal status and work authorization of their workers, and that if companies were more diligent about that, then their workers maybe wouldn't be targets of ICE. That's kind of the perspective of one industry leader that I spoke to. But on the other end, I think with these recent raids, there's been a lot of community support for the workers and effort to connect them with legal help and to pay for their bond and raise money to support them. So the reality is that Vermont can't do a lot to control what ICE decides to do.
WAMC reached out to ICE for comment and received the following statement from a spokesperson:
“ICE Boston routinely conducts operations across New England, which includes the state of Vermont.
ICE’s mission is to enforce immigration law, a Congressionally mandate function to protect America’s national security, public safety, and economic strength. Operations are conducted within the authority granted to immigration officers under Title 8. Immigration officers act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and other applicable laws when investigating immigration status and making arrests.
Every day, ICE enforces the immigration laws of the nation. DHS law enforcement methods abide by the U.S. Constitution including the Fourth Amendment. What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is whether they are illegally in the U.S. Those non-citizens who are in the United States legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.
We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App. The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return."
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Editors' note: The transcript of the conversation with Tompkins was generated by artificial intelligence and then edited and reviewed for accuracy by WAMC staff.
