Three of the eight farmworkers arrested at a Vermont dairy farm last month have been deported, according to advocates.
The local immigrant farmworker organization Migrant Justice said the federal government sent 28-year-old Luis Enrique Gomez-Aguilar to Mexico on Monday, and then sent 32-year-old Urillas Sargento and 22-year-old Dani Alvarez-Perez there today.
“ICE and Border Patrol are persecuting our community,” said Enrique Balcazar, a spokesperson with Migrant Justice. “We condemn the deportations of Luis, Urillas, and Dani, but we aren’t giving up. We are fighting for those who are still behind bars and won’t rest until they are free and back with their families and community in Vermont.”
The lawyer representing the three deported men, Vermont Law and Graduate School Center for Justice Reform director Brett Stokes, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred Gomez-Aguilar, Sargento and Alvarez-Perez to the Alexandria Staging Area in Louisiana earlier this week.
Juan Javier Rodriguez-Gomez, 41, is also now at the Louisiana facility.
“Which certainly was alarming,” Stokes said. “Typically this location is a — it's not even a detention facility, it's a staging area for deportation.”
Jesús Mendez Hernandez, 25, Diblaim Maximo Sargento-Morales, 30, Adrian Zunun-Joachin, 22 and José Edilberto Molina-Aguilar, 37, remain at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
Stokes has been representing all eight immigrant farmworkers, but said ICE never told him any of his clients were leaving the St. Albans prison.
“They're supposed to inform counsel of that 24 hours in advance,” he said.
Instead Stokes said he learned about his clients being moved out of Vermont from his other clients who are still at the St. Albans facility.
Stokes has been relying on the online ICE detainee locator to follow the whereabouts of the people he’s legally representing. He said the locator showed Alvarez-Perez, Gomez-Aguilar and Sargento in Louisiana on Monday.
“Since they've been moved out of the region, I haven't been able to contact those folks,” Stokes said. “It's basically impossible to actually get ICE on the phone.”
He added that compared to the rest of his decade or so of immigration defense legal work, since Jan. 20, the federal enforcement process has been “changing pretty significantly.”
“Folks are moved out of state so quickly, and without warning, and without ability to have had conversations with clients,” Stokes said.
Stokes did have a case last summer, under the Biden administration, in which a woman and her two kids were deported from Vermont to Honduras before he could even contact her. He said that was a “one-off” situation prior to Trump’s second term. Now, he said, it’s the norm.
Stokes said that he and other legal providers are getting worn down just trying to figure out how to contact their clients. And they’re worried about the possibility of people being deported to a country where they don’t have status.
“Lots of things are being done, in my opinion, to encourage the — you know what? I'll use their phrases — ‘self-deportation,’ and kind of alienate folks from friends, family, community and their chosen counsel,” Stokes said.
Vermont Public reached out to ICE, but did not receive a response.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested and detained the eight farmworkers at Pleasant Valley Farms in Berkshire on April 21. CBP said agents drove to the farm, which is about two and half miles from the U.S.-Canadian border, following a tip about two people exiting a wooded area and crossing the property with backpacks on. While searching for one of the people, CBP said agents “located and apprehended additional individuals determined to be illegally present in the United States.”
In a separate case on April 9, Migrant Justice said Border Patrol agents arrested a ninth member of the immigrant farmworker community, 35-year-old Arbey Lopez Lopez, while he was delivering groceries to workers at Pleasant Valley Farms. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records, Lopez is now detained at the Federal Correctional Institution in Berlin, New Hampshire.
These arrests have been criticized by Vermont officials. On Wednesday, about 90 state lawmakers, the Senate President Pro Tempore, the Speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor signed a letter in support of releasing all nine men.
A couple petitions with similar requests, circulated by Migrant Justice, also have more than 7,000 signatures.
Amanda St. Pierre, one of the owners of Pleasant Valley Farms, wrote in an email that the farm was continuing to “support them and all our employees.”
According to an interview that St. Pierre’s son, Jamie, gave to an industry podcast last summer, the dairy milks more than 3,000 cows and employs about 90 people — of whom about 40% are “people not born in this country.”
In a previous statement, the farm noted its employees were “hired following the federal and state employment requirements.”
Different sources estimate there are between 1,000 and 1,500 Latino immigrants currently in Vermont to work on farms, or to be with family members working on farms, mostly in the dairy industry.
A recent report from the state Agency of Agriculture said 94% of surveyed dairy farms in Vermont hired immigrant farmworkers. Despite this practice being widespread across the U.S., there’s no path to legal status available to these workers. The H-2A visa, for example, is seasonal, and dairy cows must be milked every day.
And these days, the farming community remains on edge.
“There’s heightened anxiety and vigilance because of the important role migrant workers play in the dairy industry and across agriculture,” wrote Vijay Nazareth, the executive director of the Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition, in a statement. “We also recognize that they are important members of the communities where they live and work and we have a collective responsibility to ensure their safety and wellbeing.”
Stokes, the legal counsel, said Wednesday that his clients’ cases were on track for removal proceedings.
He said his clients — at least those who remain in Vermont — have the possibility of getting out on bond, since none of them have criminal history in the U.S. or in Mexico, where they are all from.
“Their drive to fight their cases is unwavering,” Stokes said. “They know that we are here supporting them, and that we're doing everything that we can, and they're gracious and appreciative of that.”
Migrant Justice said Arbey Lopez Lopez, who is being represented by an immigration attorney in New Hampshire, has a bond hearing scheduled on May 15.
