MONTPELIER — The Governor said Wednesday a review is taking place of state and local law enforcement’s handling of an incident last week when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents executed a federal search warrant at a home in South Burlington that involved a vehicle crash and a clash with protesters.
The incident occurred March 11.
“From my perspective, what unfolded was totally preventable, with an injection of just a bit of common sense on the part of federal officials in particular,” said Republican Gov. Phil Scott. “With that said, when South Burlington reached out for assistance from the State Police, which was the right thing to do under the circumstances, we sent troopers to help out. And for the majority of the day the protest was peaceful, which is what we were all striving for in order to keep people safe.”
He said it’s unfortunate that things took a turn for the worse later in the day and said it was due to tactics used by federal officials that went against the recommendations of Vermont law enforcement.
“I also want to be clear, the actions of some to further agitate and escalate the situation was also unnecessary and put peaceful protesters in a situation many did not ask to be part of,” Scott said.
He said state police are currently reviewing all the body camera recordings from troopers at the scene.
“This will take a bit more time, but we’ll continue to be transparent as more details are available,” he said.
Scott was asked by reporters at a news conference to describe how the day unfolded from his perspective.
The Governor said he wasn’t directly involved, but local and state police followed the plan they came up with earlier in the year after seeing reports of ICE’s clashes with the public in other parts of the country.
He said the day began peacefully, but there was a period of time while federal agents were obtaining a search warrant that things seemed to build.
“At that point there was a gap, a time period, and I think things began to grow as people learned of the incident more protesters were coming, so that point there was another team that we had for crowd control that was brought to the site, as well as I think Williston and Burlington,” Scott said. “That’s when things got messier.”
He said South Burlington police were the ones officially in charge of the scene.
“Our charge was to keep everybody safe and to keep a separation between ICE and protesters so they could do their job. We can’t impede federal action, so we did just that,” he said.
He said he has seen one video where it appeared that a Vermont law enforcement officer was overly physical with a protester, but the reviews of the incident still need to be completed. He said the state wants to learn as much as it can from the event, as there will probably be more.
He said there have been discussions about how Vermont police can better differentiate themselves from federal law enforcement officials through their uniforms and such.
“Again, as I said before, we were trying to keep protesters safe and we can’t impede federal action. So they were going into the house. They had a warrant to go into the house. So we had to make sure that we could facilitate them creating a distance as best we could between the protesters and the federal officials,” Scott said.
Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison said state officials had conversations with federal immigration authorities, both local ones and those from a Boston office, about actions in the state.
“We believed we had done the good work to sow good relationships in advance of this event, and we believed that we would get information, maybe not far in advance, but we would get a heads-up on any actions that were going to happen,” she said. “And as the Governor said, that did not happen.”
Morrison said there are plans to discuss this with federal officials.
She took issue with a reporter’s line of questioning: “It’s very clear from your line of questioning that you have an opinion and a predisposition that the purpose of the state police critical action team was to ‘facilitate the actions of ICE,’” she said. “That is not what their purpose was; it was to protect everyone, including ICE agents with a warrant.”
She noted that the person — who turned out not to be the one ICE agents were looking for, according to reports — fled the scene in a vehicle, causing a crash. She said that made this more than a civil immigration procedure.
Morrison said it was known that ICE had a warrant and planned to execute it.
“We chose to protect the ICE agents from the protesters and the protesters from the ICE agents because we knew, as I just said to you, that they were going in come hell or high water, and we have seen in other parts of the country that if we withdrew, ICE would have used other tactics to break through the crowd, and we presumed that Vermonters would be hurt or harmed by those tactics,” said Morrison.
In January, amidst a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, two people were killed at the hands of federal authorities, sparking public outcry. Many have feared what will occur should ICE ramp up activity in their communities. Earlier this week, Rutland City officials discussed the possibility, saying they likely will have no notice if and when ICE undertakes an operation in the city.
Morrison said Wednesday she has not had direct talks with city officials about this, and that would likely happen at the police command level. The state and Rutland law enforcement regularly discuss other matters, however, and lines of communication are open.