As the day progressed, however, “the peaceful activists were joined by agitators — a Trojan horse, of sorts, leading way to an escalation instigated by the crowd,” said interim Burlington Police Chief Shawn Burke. They ignored orders, spat at officers, threw projectiles and, in one case, broke the window of a State Police vehicle, sending a trooper to the hospital with an eye injury, officials said.
“This behavior was not activism,” Burke said. “It was criminal and cannot be tolerated.”
But according to protest leaders and witnesses, law enforcement officials had it backward.
It was state and local police who escalated the situation when they “worked hand in glove with federal deportation agents to facilitate the detention” of those in the house, according to Will Lambek, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Migrant Justice. A State Police tactical team cleared a path through protesters blocking the residence, allowing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter the residence and remove three people — an action Lambek said violated the state’s Fair & Impartial Policing policies.
“Vermonters were just subjected to two hours of misdirection, victim-blaming and, at times, outright fabrication,” Lambek said at a press conference after the hearing, which he called “a disgrace.”
State Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, who attended the protest alongside other lawmakers, said she was “appalled but not surprised” by the police leaders’ testimony.
“The first instances of violence that I saw were at the hands of Vermont State Police, when they aggressively and violently threw people off the stairs and into the bushes and onto the ground,” she said at the press conference. “The escalation was at the hands of the State Police, not the protesters.”
Vyhovsky was shoved into the street by a state trooper, she said, while walking away from the protest.
The incident began last Wednesday morning when ICE agents sought to detain a man they believed to be Deyvi Daniel Corona-Sanchez, a Mexican citizen who had previously been deported and, more recently, charged with driving under the influence. According to an affidavit filed by ICE agent Colton Riley, two men fled in a car registered to Corona-Sanchez and struck several vehicles, including one operated by an ICE officer, before fleeing into a nearby house.
Federal officials surrounded the home, in a busy South Burlington neighborhood, but could not enter it without a warrant.
Throughout the day, activists converged and blockaded the doors of the house, as federal authorities sought a warrant and summoned more agents from neighboring states.
Local and State Police leaders said Thursday they sought to dissuade ICE from entering by force but were unsuccessful. They ultimately decided to support the operation, once a federal judge issued a warrant, to prevent federal agents from using “a much more aggressive tactic,” according to South Burlington Police Chief Bill Breault — a decision he believes could have saved lives.
“I am certain that the presence of local police and troopers stopped unnecessary and avoidable violence from happening,” he told lawmakers.
But as federal agents entered the home and emerged with three people — none of whom turned out to be Corona-Sanchez — the situation nevertheless grew violent.
Protesters blocked law enforcement vehicles from leaving, leading to chaotic encounters — including a Burlington officer throwing a protester to the curb and injuring her. Eventually, after many state and local officers had departed, federal agents sought to free a remaining trapped vehicle by deploying pepper balls and flashbang grenades.
According to Vermont law enforcement leaders, there were no easy options that day.
“The actions of both ICE and violent protesters placed our police officers and troopers in an incredibly challenging position,” Breault said Thursday. “However, state and local law enforcement executed their public safety mission with incredible restraint and professionalism.”
In recent days, federal judges have cast doubt on whether the three people removed from the house should have been detained in the first place. None were named in the warrant and two of them — Camila and Jissela Johana Patin Patin, sisters from Ecuador who have sought asylum in the United States — appear to have been uninvolved in the car chase.
The third detainee, Christian Jerez-Andrade, of Honduras, was in the car that fled ICE agents, according to Migrant Justice, as was his nephew, José Jerez, an 18-year-old US citizen who was in the house but was not detained.
At a hearing Monday in federal court in Burlington, Judge Geoffrey Crawford released Jissela Johana Patin Patin. He followed up with a written order criticizing ICE for its practice of detaining those who pose no danger to the community and are unlikely to flee.
Patin Patin’s continued detention, Crawford wrote, “would not have been just a procedural due process violation; it also would have been a clear and continuing violation of her substantive due process right to be free from civil detention that serves no legitimate governmental purpose.”
A federal immigration judge in Chelmsford, Mass., ordered Jerez-Andrade released on bond Thursday. Camila Patin Patin is expected to go before a federal judge on Friday.
Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.
