Updated at 7:47 p.m.
MONTPELIER — Top Vermont Democratic senators on Tuesday called on the state’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott to terminate an agreement with the federal government that allows immigration enforcement agencies to hold detainees at state-owned prisons.
The push by Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central; Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast; and Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, comes a day after a prominent Palestinian activist — who is a legal U.S. resident — was suddenly arrested by federal agents in Colchester during an interview for U.S. citizenship.
The senators pointed to Mohsen Mahdawi’s arrest by masked and plainclothes officers as an impetus for their comments to reporters Tuesday afternoon at a press conference in Baruth’s Statehouse office. White, who accompanied Mahdawi to his interview, captured video of Mahdawi’s detention that has since been widely viewed.
Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University, was being held at one of the state’s prisons — Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans — as of Tuesday afternoon, according to an online database of detainees in the state.
Federal immigration agencies “have lost the trust, we believe, not only in the Senate — but of Vermonters, generally,” Baruth told reporters. He also aimed criticism at Scott, contending the governor has not made enough of an effort to push back against federal actions that, in the pro tem’s view, are “making our communities less safe.”
In a brief statement to VTDigger Tuesday after the senators’ press conference, Scott’s press secretary, Amanda Wheeler, said the governor planned to meet with legislative leadership to discuss their request further.
Scott’s office then sent out a press release calling for Mahdawi to be released from detention unless “there is evidence that Mahdawi is a threat to the security of our nation, or Vermont,” adding the office was seeking “further clarification of the facts in this case.”
“What cannot be justified, is how this action was undertaken,” the release continued. “Law enforcement officers in this country should not operate in the shadows or hide behind masks.”
At issue is a memorandum of understanding the state signed last August with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The agreement also requires the state to provide medical care for people detained by the feds as if they were in state custody.
Under the memo, which was first reported by VTDigger earlier this month, the state receives $180 per night from the federal government per person held. That fee is less, however, than the actual cost to hold someone, according to corrections leadership.
The agreement does not specify how long detainees can be held in state prisons but does allow prison superintendents to “refuse admittance due to capacity.” The state’s role in housing federal detainees has ramped up significantly in the months since President Donald Trump took office for a second time, VTDigger has reported.
The agreement is in effect until this August. It requires Vermont to provide at least 120 days’ notice of its intent to pull out, which, from Tuesday, would run into mid-August.
The senators’ press conference Tuesday appeared to jolt debates over whether the agreement should be nixed into the public sphere after such conversations had been brewing behind the scenes in the Statehouse, even on Tuesday morning.
Baruth told reporters he was aware of at least one committee chair in the House and one in the Senate who had been in conversations with Scott’s administration about steps the state could take to “renegotiate” its memorandum with the feds, but “those talks seem to have hit a wall.” He suggested the governor’s office was slow-walking negotiations with lawmakers, which prompted him to take his case to the press.
Pressed by reporters, Baruth also said he had not personally asked the governor to cancel the agreement outright. Rather, “I am asking that right now,” he said, referring to the press conference.
Two members of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee had written to Scott’s chief of staff, Jason Gibbs, on Tuesday morning asking for a meeting about legislation aimed at ending the agreement with the feds, according to an email obtained by VTDigger. The two lawmakers — Rep. Troy Headrick, I-Burlington, and Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier — wrote they were “committed to making this work and to providing the cover your office may need” to support the proposal, the message reads.
Gibbs wrote back around the time the senators’ press conference ended that Scott’s office would be communicating with House leadership “on all matters of importance to the people of Vermont,” though did not provide further details, according to a separate email obtained by VTDigger.
In a separate written statement after the press conference took place, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, called Mahdawi’s arrest “completely unacceptable” and said she has “been having thoughtful and strategic conversations about next steps that are within the bounds of the Legislature.”
She added, “that means ensuring we understand the full legal and operational scope of the MOU with ICE and making sure any and all action we take does not unintentionally impact the individuals we are trying to protect.”
The state Corrections Department has previously told VTDigger that it believes it’s able to provide better care for people held by immigration authorities than they would receive in federal detention centers. In at least one case, attorneys for another recently detained college student — Rümeysa Öztürk — have asked a federal judge to consider moving their client to a detention facility in Vermont, among other options, rather than allow her to continue being held in a facility in Louisiana.
Öztürk is one of several students ICE has held at the Louisiana facility in recent weeks, a strategy that, according to NPR, attorneys say the government is using to have the students’ immigration proceedings heard before more conservative courts.
Asked about that concern Tuesday, the senators said that recent arrests around the country, and rhetoric from the Trump administration, have pushed them to seek limits to the state’s involvement with federal immigration enforcement as much as possible. Baruth said a judge would still be able to order a federal immigration detainee to be held in a Vermont prison, if the facts of a given legal case allowed it.
“We have already been asking members of the (Scott) administration to look at our responsibility being a pathway for people being abducted from other states to land here and then be sent onward,” Ram Hinsdale, the majority leader, told reporters. “That is not something we should have done in our name.”
Ethan Weinstein contributed reporting.
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify the relationship between two federal agencies.
