Two women were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Monday at their Manchester homes, a local official and an advocate said.
Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, confirmed ICE’s presence in town and said at least one person arrested is a parent of young children.
“There’s been ICE presence in Manchester. They’ve been making arrests,” Martin Diaz said Wednesday. “I understand that people are really afraid.”
Will Lambek, of the advocacy organization Migrant Justice, said one of the women detained Monday is Davona Williams, known by her nickname Candy by friends and family who called the organization this week. Originally from Jamaica, Williams is a mother and has lived in the United States for 18 years, Lambek said.
Williams, 42, was checked in to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility at 5:14 p.m. Monday, according to the Vermont Department of Corrections database.
As of Wednesday, Williams is detained at the state facility and is on federal immigration hold, Department of Corrections spokesperson Haley Sommer wrote in an email to VTDigger. Sommer referred other inquiries from VTDigger to ICE.
The presence of immigration enforcement at the two women’s homes at the Torrey Knoll housing development in Manchester was “unbeknownst to the town or the police department,” said Scott Murphy, town manager of Manchester, in Bennington County.
“It caused some consternation among a lot of people, especially our workers in town,” he said. “We have a lot of workers that are from another country that have been relocated here legally.”
Manchester community members plan to help the family and children of the detained individuals by providing counselors and reaching out to the local food pantry to deliver food, Murphy said.
Lambek said in an interview that the ICE arrests in Manchester are an “awful situation” and are part of an ongoing pattern of detentions across the state. Since the arrest on Monday in Manchester, Lambek said Migrant Justice has received information about two other possible ICE arrests in Rutland and Winooski on Wednesday.
“ICE’s actions seek to terrorize immigrant families. This latest detention is part of an escalating wave of attacks from Trump’s deportation agents to detain workers and separate families, both in Vermont and around the country,” Lambek wrote in a statement to VTDigger. “Vermonters must stand up to this violence and protect our neighbors.”
Neither Murphy nor Lambek nor Martin Diaz could confirm the identity of the other individual arrested in Manchester or other information on the arrest.
ICE officials and the Manchester police chief did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Clarification: A previous version of this story misnamed the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project.
