Williston, a small
Vermont town of 10,000 people, is best known as a bucolic suburb of Burlington laden with historic buildings and farmland.
Like the rest of the state, the hamlet is about 90 percent white. Williston has seen few of the sorts of large-scale Trump administration immigration operations that have sparked raucous protests. Aside from a few raids against migrant farm workers, there has been little in the way of detentions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The town is, in other words, a surprising scene for the robust protests that erupted there over the past two years, with hundreds protesting against ICE.
The explanation lies in a low-slung modern building with façade of glass and dark-blue ribbed sheet metal: ICE’s
National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center
, a facility designed to help identify, track, and arrest deportation targets across the country. Along with other Department of Homeland Security infrastructure in the area, the NCATC made Williston into a hub of anti-immigration enforcement.
The protests, however, weren’t initially met with the sorts of
crackdown
against
speech
experienced by
other
anti-ICE
protesters
. The local prosecutor for Chittenden County, where the surveillance center is located, repeatedly opted
not to prosecute protesters
arrested at the facility.
As the Trump administration ramped up its attacks against left-wing protesters, however, Williston was not spared. Beginning in September, state and federal authorities have found ways to levy criminal charges against activists.
“Our assumption has been that they did this so close to the week of action in order to try to intimidate people.”
In late September, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark introduced surprise
misdemeanor charges
against 13 protesters for allegedly participating in a July sit-in at the NCATC. Then, last week, federal prosecutors
unveiled surprise charges
against five people, some of whom were already being ch
… [more]
