BURLINGTON — On Wednesday afternoon, a typically routine commission meeting of airport officials was swept up in the growing backlash over the second Trump administration’s ramped up push to deport undocumented immigrants.
Dozens of Vermonters spilled out of the tiny Wright Room, a conference room on the second floor of the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, and into the atrium to demand that Vermont’s largest airport take a stand against the transfer of people detained by ICE through its terminals.
The commission meeting was the culmination of months of conflict between Burlington-based activists who have tracked the movement of people detained by ICE through the airport and airport officials who continue to assert they have no communication with or control over the federal agency.
“I’ve had no communication with ICE, ever, on these situations,” Nic Longo, aviation director at the airport, said after the meeting. “The last communication I had with ICE was a few months ago that said, ‘If you don’t move your cars I’m going to be towing them.’”
But activists, who have been tracking the movement of ICE agents and people detained by the agency through the airport since May, have argued that the transfer of detainees amounts to illegal human trafficking because of their perceived lack of access to legal representation and communication with their family members.
In early July, activists attended an airport commission meeting and presented data they’d collected, which showed more than 450 people detained by ICE had been moved through the airport since January. Then, on July 16, activists claimed their protest of moving three women detained by ICE through the airport in the early morning hours led to those women being removed by ICE from the airport. On July 25 and Aug. 1, activists recorded and shared with VTDigger two instances of ICE agents moving people detained by ICE through nonpublic side doors of the airport and into what appeared to be TSA security checkpoints.
“Trump and ICE have trafficked over 450 people through BTV airport since January, terrorizing our neighbors and sending them to concentration camps in Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas,” a flyer for the monthly meeting created by an activist read. The flyer went on to say that the airport was “complicit” in this relocation by “granting special access to masked agents and hiding them from accountability while pretending to be ignorant.”
Almost 40 Vermonters rotated in and out of the room that held only 18 chairs for the public to speak during the public forum portion of the monthly meeting. Their comments, both in person and online, lasted almost three hours. Even more people milled about on the second floor, listening to testimony from speakers through a megaphone connected to a Zoom recording.
Airport commissioners listened quietly and often nodded along. Longo said there were more people than they typically see at the monthly meetings, and they changed the meeting room, with a maximum capacity of 30 people, to accommodate a rotating cast of speakers.
Many speakers shared stories of their affection for the small airport, and their disappointment that airport staff weren’t taking a public stand. Others shared stories of working with immigrants and refugees who were detained, including farm workers who have spent decades in Vermont’s dairy industry.
Along with activists who had been monitoring the airport, teachers, veterans, former lobbyists and retired lawyers showed up to demand action. One Vermont woman cried while making a public comment over Zoom, sharing the experience of growing up in fear that her father would be deported before he received his U.S. citizenship. Some people called for a boycott of the airport, and others asked for commissioners and the aviation director to resign.
Jana Porter, a 75-year-old Vermonter who spoke in person, echoed many speakers when she called the commissioners complicit in the movement of ICE detainees.
“It’s time for you to take a stand on this and say no,” Porter said. “ICE is not going to be sneaking human beings in the back door in the dark of the night.”
The movement of ICE agents through non-public side doors, recorded by activists, was mentioned by several speakers as their impetus for attending the commissioners’ meeting. After the meeting, Longo said using a side door, either by a member of the public or airport staff, was not allowed unless there was coordination with a law enforcement agency. When asked why ICE agents were using non-public side doors, Longo said he had no idea.
“As far as I’m aware, we have not given out a badge to access any of our doors to ICE,” Longo said. “Their coordination would have had to have been through another federal agency.”
The Department of Homeland Security, the umbrella agency over ICE and the Transportation Security Administration, does have such a badge that they could have shared with ICE agents, Longo said. He didn’t know where ICE agents went after entering the side door, he said.
At the end of the meeting, Longo addressed the speakers and acknowledged their time spent sharing their perspectives and advising the commissioners. He said he and the mayor were working to address their concerns after meeting with activists over the last few weeks.
“We have a lot of work to do, and we have a lot of limitations,” Longo said.
Commissioner Chip Mason said it was frustrating to hear hours of emotional testimony and that it felt personal to be accused of being complicit with ICE’s activities. He asked Longo for a deliverable focused on the issue. Longo said he didn’t know if one existed, calling the situation “one of the most complex things I’ve worked on since I’ve been here.”
“I don’t think public pressure is going to be abated until a work product comes forward,” Mason said. “I could quit, you could quit, but I don’t know if we as a commission have the authority to tell ICE they can’t move through our airport.”
In July, airport officials told VTDigger they are obligated to work with federal law enforcement officials because the airport receives millions of dollars in federal grants. But a recent decision by a California judge prevents the federal government from withholding funds for impeding ICE’s actions, according to Longo. Vermont was part of the lawsuit that spurred that preliminary injunction.
But the airport’s relationship with ICE remains legally dicey.
According to a memo the airport received in June after requesting legal advice from Kaplan Kirsch, a national law firm, the city’s obligations are “immensely complicated and changing in real time as litigation proceeds on various fronts challenging the administration’s changes to how local governments like the city are directed to interact with ICE.”
The memo emphasized that many of the conclusions in the report could change day to day as legal challenges unfold, but it stated that ICE had broad legal authority to enforce federal immigration law and operate through the public areas of the airport. City action to interfere with ICE actions or operations could lead to criminal penalties, according to the memo.
“The law might say that the airport must allow it,” David Miskell, a retired organic farmer, told commissioners during the public forum. “I believe our brave little state has done many U.S. firsts. We can stop ICE hate here in this Leahy airport.”
The city could, in fact, have some effect on ICE operations because it has the power to regulate the airport, according to the memo. The law firm suggested some rules and regulations that could affect ICE and its operations without targeting the agency, such as enforcing vehicular rules, limiting access to non-public areas like offices or portions of the airfield and limiting the servicing of chartered flights.
Longo said he has talked to colleagues at other airports across the country and they had a shared frustration over interactions with ICE, but that none felt they had direct control over the actions of federal law enforcement agencies.
Helen Riehle, another commissioner at the meeting, requested more information on federal and state human trafficking laws, and how other similarly sized airports were handling their relationship with federal law enforcement agencies around the country.
“Right now, airports are kind of alone on this subject,” Longo said. “It’s very, very challenging talking to other directors and colleagues because each airport is doing a different thing with a different solution.”
Longo noted that the airport had begun putting signage on the back of bathroom stalls in different languages to call out human trafficking. An activist called that hotline last Thursday after witnessing ICE agents move detainees through a non-public side door, but said the hotline redirected them to an ICE tipline, according to Leif Taranta, a fellow activist who heard the call.
Commissioner Connor Daley asked if the situation with ICE could be a standing item on the airport commission’s agenda moving forward.
“I don’t think this is the end,” Riehle said.
