 Thanks so much for that introduction Diane and welcome again to all of you for this event and to all of our guest speakers our Panelists it's such an honor to be hosting this event in conjunction with central Vermont refugee action Network and to welcome you all to the Unitarian Church of Montpelier So we'll go ahead and get our evening started. We have a nice lineup of speakers here Who have a lot to share from their personal and professional experience on these issues relating to refugees and migrant workers in Vermont and and really around the country So our first speaker this evening Is Susan Sussman Susan is a caseworker for senator Patrick Leahy specializing in immigration issues and Susan has worked with the senator for the past 11 years Prior to that Susan had a long legal career in a variety of roles Working on human and civil rights in Vermont and as an equity and diversity trainer and mediator Welcome Susan Thank You Joan and thank you everybody for coming out on such an incredibly beautiful day and evening We were wondering if we're if anybody was gonna come tonight and so thank you all for being here But I think it really shows The cord that this issue and these issues strike for a lot of people in the interest for for folks So thanks for being here. So as a caseworker for senator Leahy, I work on Issues involving anything having to do with immigration anything having to do with any of the subsets of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State Which means I haven't been having anything to do lately. It's been a very quiet time in the office But It's been overwhelming. It's been completely overwhelming and So what I'm gonna do really is set the stage with an overview of the title of This evening current challenges for refugees immigrants and migrant workers in Vermont And what this really means is I'm going to be sharing a lot of really bad news very discouraging things But it's important to know and it's important to have an idea of what's really happening And things change By the minute I was saying that I had one set of information when I was starting my day And then that was a good thing I was listening to NPR and the way driving back from Burlington because there was new news and actually a change in something so Here we go So I'm gonna take it in the order of the of our topic refugees then immigrants and then migrant workers And you can hear a lot more from the rest of the panelists so what has happened for refugees and is that Trump reduced the number of refugees that the United States would accept for a fiscal year 2018 Reduced it from the hundred and ten thousand that had been raised The that cap had gone up to from eighty thousand a hundred and ten thousand by President Obama and Trump reduced it to forty five thousand That's for an annual Number and you just think of how many refugees are Flooding into European countries right now, and this is just minuscule but the the actual Arrivals and people being able to get through this refugee processing. It's looking like in FY 18 We're not going to be seeing 45,000 refugees in the United States new refugees in the United States There's an estimate of maybe about 21,000 That not gonna even get near the cap of 45,000 so Trump issued an executive order that froze all refugee resettlement for a while and then a second executive order came out which Reopened the program but with two major things one is additional Extreme vetting for people people now have to turn over their social media passwords and For and where they have been for the last 15 years. It used to be five years and extended to 15 years so a lot more vetting of people and It also prioritized categories of refugees for resettlement with refugees from the following countries at a lower priority and with even more extreme vetting and those countries are Egypt Iran Iraq Libya Mali North Korea We'll see if that stays the same Somalia South Sudan Sudan Syria and Yemen and Vermont has resettled many refugees from Particularly Somalia South Sudan Sudan Those three countries of that list of less prioritized countries and what I'm seeing in the work that I do is Just on an almost daily basis where people have come and been resettled in Vermont Refugees they have they're allowed to file a particular type of petition to bring their family members here it could be a parent it could be a spouse it could be children and If they're coming from if their family is from you know originally Somalia South Sudan or Sudan It is ground to a halt. It's just happening so so slowly and people have been waiting For years for their family members to join them. So that's the impact I'm seeing right here in Vermont of these executive orders and the change in the refugee resettlement for immigrants That's the issue of the travel ban or what we call travel ban number three Because there was travel ban number one that was held up struck down By the courts and withdrawn by the administration then travel ban two same thing and then travel ban three and This one has gone up to the Supreme US Supreme Court. We're waiting for a final decision But while waiting for that decision The Supreme Court allowed the travel ban to go into effect even though lower court decisions had halted it so this affects people who are coming to the United States as Immigrants or non immigrants and non immigrants could be visitors You know people trying to come to their child's graduation or somebody's wedding here in the United States So either the non immigrants are visitors students Temporary workers musical performers, you know anybody who's coming on a temporary basis and this has to do with Prohibiting The ability of people to come as an immigrant or a non immigrant if you come from one of eight countries Okay, and there are slight differences between the country as I'm going to rattle those off too. So it's Chad Iran those students will be considered Libya Somalia Some non immigrants might be allowed from Somalia Yemen North Korea Syria and Some governmental officials and their families from Venezuela. That's a particular category that went in there And then while not prohibited People from Iraq and Iraqi nationals will undergo special vetting So some waivers are being granted and some have already been granted I've worked on a case fairly recently where the father trying to bring his 18 year old daughter here as an immigrant has been going through the process for a couple of you know, a couple of years maybe and You know the the Officer who interviewed her Was recommending a waiver. So we thought great. She's gonna come But oh no, it has to now go to the Department of State for further vetting and the estimate is that We won't know whether the waiver will be approved or not For another six months to a year So even with the waiver process is taking quite a long time and then migrant workers though I with will land back here I don't know how much I want to say that because you're gonna talk a lot more about this But I'll just set the stage here because I basically the gloves have come off for You know with the with other executive orders by Trump which have empowered Customs and border protection and ice which is immigration and customs enforcement to go after anyone in the United States Who is here without legal documentation? We are seeing you know increase in questioning Buses being boarded and people being questioned about their status detentions deportations and raids nationwide so that's you know That's some of the bad news and then there's the the emotional issue that is not Necessarily covered by our topic tonight, but I want to mention it anyway, and that is the issue that an issue that is of Tremendous concern to senator lehi and I'm sure probably every single person in this room and on this panel And that's this administration zero tolerance policy, which is creating this separation of Families and and pulling children away from their parents and and criminalizing Essentially criminalizing people who are crossing our southern border And trying to seek asylum There are many other parts of this, but I mean that is the current issue of the day the senator has Made an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate about this He has co-sponsored. He is one of the 40 co-sponsors of senator Feinstein's keeping families together act which was introduced this week and Just yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee of which the senator is as a member Spoke discussed this issue and the senator made yet another impassioned Speech during the committee time went way over his time doing that and what he said three times very loudly is Where is our soul? So that's where my boss is on this and I do have some information on the table there about some of these things, but that is Two minutes. All right. I usually talk forever. So this is really good So I will all be able to answer questions or at least try to answer questions afterwards, but thanks again for coming Thanks so much Our next speaker this evening is Laurie Stavrend Laurie has been the community partnership coordinator for the United States Committee on refugees and immigrants in Vermont for nine years Before that Laurie dedicated most of her professional life to practicing architecture domestically and internationally She returned to Vermont in 1989 to raise her children near their grandparents at US CRI Laurie is part of a team which assists refugees as they work to rebuild their lives and become Contributing members of the community Welcome Laurie Thank you. Thank you all for being here on this beautiful night and thinking about others the the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants is more than a hundred years old and Started at a time when There wasn't assistance For people coming from Europe and people from Europe were not coming in suits and ties and You know looking like we do today. These are our ancestors That we may have forgotten exactly what life was like for them And they needed help when they were coming and that is the tradition that we're following in today The refugee resettlement program as we know it today has evolved over time But essentially started in 1980 when the refugee act was passed in response to the war in Vietnam We have been resettling people from many countries around the world Currently we're resettling people from Bhutan Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo We should also be resettling people from Iraq from Syria from Somalia from Sudan from South Sudan But they're not able to come And that really is Not about numbers it's about people It's it's about human rights and that's something that we see really close closely in our work every day These are our people who are relatives of the people we know some of them are relatives of people on staff and They're people who are sometimes in danger Not only is the US Cutting back on refugees coming. They're also cutting back on the money that they're putting out for humanitarian Service in refugee camps. So people are seeing they have less food There's less medical care and that's what we're hearing from families who have families back in the camp The people who come to Vermont generally speaking have it's been 20 years since they fled their home so we're not talking about some recent problem we're talking about a long-term Tragedy personal tragedy and What happens when you're a refugee it means that you've either been persecuted or You have reason to believe you will be persecuted or you've suffered through conflict And you you have no home and you also have no country You have to have left your country you have to argue and prove that you deserve refugee status and you're out there It's not like It's not like there was a flood and then you move to another house or maybe you rebuild your house You have nowhere to go you have no control over your life and you are really at the mercy of the country where you are any kind of Services that you can receive from organizations such as the United Nations And from the and the country where you are controls what kind of services are available to you So if you follow anything that's happening say in Burma for the Rohingya Who you know, they may be in Bangladesh and getting some minimal help They may still be internally displaced within their country, but they're really at risk So the people here They they that's where they were and they they are thinking about Their family their friends and the people that they don't know that are still not safe When you come to the US as a refugee You apply in your 18 you have to be 18 you can have a spouse and you can have children under 18 So if each of us think about our own families You're a refugee, you know, who could be in your case if if you're thinking about a son a daughter a Sister a brother a parent who is not within that definition. They are another case and they will be processed in a different in a different case So they may or may not be able to come through and travel to the US at the same time Oftentimes it takes many years for all of the members of a family to be reunited in the US So this is This makes it really hard for people even to make the initial Decision to apply to be resettled You can imagine if you're leaving behind your 18 year old child to come here and Then if the travel ban happened, I mean, how how inhumane is that? What we see happening too is that Families are when they flee they may not all have been able to be together Some family members may have been lost or ended up in totally different places So when Susan is talking about helping people come here These are close family members, you know that are really important to the fabric of a family and And Then you have the situation of say the Syrian families in Rutland. We had three families come Believe me, they wanted Other members of their family to join them So now they're here It's not like the members of their family can get a visa and then go somewhere and they could meet in a third country That's not going to happen. They are truly isolated From their family and I'm not able to connect and Worried about how people are doing The on again off again Arrival of refugees to the US Makes it really hard for programs to Function, it's very hard for staffing. It's hard for funding. We're talking about highly trained experienced Staff who help people in basically a wraparound Way to get started in the US. You don't want to dismantle that kind of resource so if this goes on for an Extended length of time what you're doing is really having a long-term impact Once you you're able to to restart The resettlement program in the US What we have been doing in Vermont is Expanding our services to the people who are here so we're broadening and deepening what we're doing We are offering more services to people who have different immigration status For instance citizenship classes. You can imagine how important it is now to become a citizen We've extended into more youth programs so we are looking to do as much as we can for people who are here help as many people to come to join and and We appreciate the support that you are showing by coming here And we hope that you will be educating yourselves and educating others out in the community. Thank you Thank You Laurie Our next speaker is to insane To insane was born in Burma and lived in a refugee camp on the border of Thailand and Burma He came to the United States as an exchange student in 2003 Before coming here he interned at the office of the human rights documentary unit for Burma And this was followed two years later with volunteer work for a Catholic charity for the refugee resettlement program in Fort Wayne, Indiana To insane joined the ref Vermont refugee resettlement program in Colchester in 2008 First as a staff interpreter for Burmese refugees and he now serves as a case manager Welcome to insane. Thank you. Thank you Thank you very much everyone. Thank you for coming out. I believe this is working Okay Thank you very much for giving me opportunity to speak a little bit today. I just want to Share a little bit about that day-to-day that that I'm working with families and Cochester of Vermont. So since this New administration the new presidents come in we have been so busy with the works that the actual job No extra work a lot of people are Coming in with so many questions in their fear, you know, they're going to happen to something to things So one of them is a lot of families come here. Some of them are elders, you know, or disables Which some of them they don't even speak and they don't even read and write in their own languages but when they come here After under this president you had to become a citizen in order to become citizen You have to study so hard of English, you know, and then the history everything So a lot of elders they thought they would never take this test They were just live on in the under the green card a permanent resident card and then one of those day They will become a citizen but now they're so being so fear and they're becoming and every day is in like trying to register other English classes to become a citizen But they all and they are you know, they're never learn English or their own languages So it's so difficult so difficult, but they have been working so so hard to become a Citizen so that's happening almost every day at my work and another thing is also there also another group the younger generation or younger like Our age they have managed to find their own time in their time after working You know two jobs or one jobs and then they find their own time to study and become, you know Permanent residents become a citizen They have take the test and they have passed and they become citizen and then hold in this You know like our US citizenship certificates and passports and so proud of you know, we finally find a home Or we finally a place that we can call, you know a country with which we never had So but on the other hand a lot of them are coming into me or people at our office asking question Are we really allowed to trouble even with you as passports? Even we are American citizen. Are we allowed to trouble and then they were coming to ask me Question like don't say can you guarantee or can you ask your boss to write me a letter that I were trouble I will go to go back to my home and visit. Can you guarantee that I'm like, oh, you're afraid I know but there's there's no way I can guarantee, you know, I don't know for sure what's going to happen when they trouble I know I can say that with the US passport You as US citizen, you are legally allowed to trouble, but we don't know we cannot guarantee So those things are happening every day at our office. I'm working with families all the time with those things and another thing That I would like to share a little bit about is About five years ago, we have a quite a few families that Becoming here eligible to file the family reunifications which mean like Children's who are being here they can file fire To apply for their parents to bring here or the parents already here can apply for their children to join here There was like five six years ago We applied and then under this President, you know all these travel bands and all these new roads and things like that This has slow really down or it's not happening. No one's traveling So people has been waiting for many years the children are here and their parents are over there You know, they're knocking over door door and asking me. Can you do something? Can you call someone? I'm like, who do I call to you? Who do I call to we'll be calling to Susan's a lot for sure So But that's all we can do and then can you write something? Can you talk to your boss? I said, I'd be talking to my boss every day about these things, but that's nothing we can do about it but you know, like two year three years can be like President, you know four years you can vote it out, you know and it changed But like three or four years a lot of families waiting. This is life. This is our a lot of life You know here was changing over there or so if they've been here for two three years earlier Instead of waiting in the refugee camp a lot of things can happen to them A lot of things can happen to the children a lot of things can happen to the parents They have you already working here. They have you already established their life living in peacefully The children will be in the school system or studying something great. Those things are like happening every day so You know like like border and walls I I was born in the jungle where you know, like the soldiers are fighting in Collins. I have lit Like no clothes, you know, like borders. I cannot cross to somewhere else I would cross into the another country as a refugee I lived in the world for many years and as a refugee But I managed to get out or those refugee or those are those camps or those walls I came to United States about 10 15 years ago and I thought No border wars those will be in my past. I will never ever be talking again But today I'm here talking about these things, you know in the 21st century. We're still talking about these things I cannot believe myself. Let's stay happening. So Yeah, that's all I want to share Thank you, Tenstein Our next guest speaker is El Teyeb Awadala El Teyeb grew up in the Darfur region of Sudan on his family's farm He completed high school and started college in Khartoum But the Civil War in Sudan and Libya resulted in him becoming a refugee and he resettled in Burlington He is now in his first year at Norwich University Welcome El Teyeb Thank you so much. Thank you very much for everybody and I'm happy, you know to meet you guys all of you and First of all this is very hard to say and if if you have a lot of Stories in your mind and you try to you know, start with something gonna be difficult I grew up in Sudan You guys people who know doesn't know Sudan Sudan is in Africa, which is South Egypt. Egypt is familiar with you guys. So and I grew up in village. I Used to go to school, but in the village is not like You know living in the cities You you'll be having you know very limited Education is stuff, you know material After I finished my primary school I Went to Khartoum to study high school All this I'm depending of myself is not it's not like America here. You guys have family support Also, you have government support you have to support but back there We don't have something like that if you if your family able to support you that's enough if not you're gonna you know find out yourself and you're gonna work hard to support yourself to pay your you know expenses for a school either for Living I Work hard to finish, you know high school and graduated to to University and then I went for university for four years which is was Electrical engineering I Couldn't finish because of war in West Sudan West Sudan is called the four is considered from Three states We see you call here in Vermont like you have Vermont, New Hampshire and Boston, which is you know close After Fight happened in in that for or war happened in that for because of the government Government of Sudan is not something that you know It's not good government is it's horrible It's horrible very horrible so They they they they don't you know, they don't They don't care about people. They don't care about, you know, I mean by people You know normal people they don't care about elderly people. They don't care about kids. They don't care about students They don't care even about the country They are horrible so Because of that war Families and people all the people almost 80 percent of the people living in in Darfur Which is in South Sudan they move to refugee camp in age in There's two two main countries first of all the biggest one in Chad, which is we have a border between Sudan and Chad They are almost I can say I can say 12 refugee camps every refugee camp over 15,000 people This is the only job in the other country in Center of Creek Center of Creek This is conceiving just two camps. I don't know exact what number so My my family all the people from West they moved to refugee camp and I couldn't finish the school at that time. I Started school in 2003 and I ended up in 2008, which is you know beginning of 2008 I moved to refugee camp because of family so I couldn't I couldn't finish so a lot of pressure so Went to refugee camp to find my family to live with them and help them Refugee came as you know guys My friend he mentioned that is is not is placed that just temporary is not Living is not home so I Went to Libya to find a job At the same time I I have done a lot of work like driving Selling newspaper so Even I know literally of English is not that is Not is not fluently, but I know a little bit of English. So I used to drive, you know between Chad and Libya Chad and Libya also, you know, just a border is I I Find out I found I find a job there and I went to Libya to work. That was 2011 now it's 2010 by December of 2010 I Find out myself. I I got a job there is a pretty good job but I couldn't work even in all three months because also Libya happened, you know Fight in Qaddafi if you guys remember in 2011 so in 2011 I find out myself because of horrible things happen in in in Libya. I Simply I I find out myself I Cannot go back either my country Sudan or refugee camp in Chad I Because of that thing because of that fight in in in in Libya. I I Have a lot of friends co-workers and case managers and That was in it tries to remember this name is What they call the case manager was he saying and the other Co-co-co-co-workers was where This guy I forgot his name actually sorry so They are there are many different country the about seven countries one of those from Holland and Germany the other two from Africa and the other two We are all about loving people. We found out ourselves, we can now move somewhere in Libya. If you go out or somewhere, you're gonna be killed by what they call, they call it revolution, but right now they are doing, it's not a revolution actually. So we find out ourselves inside the house because our case manager, he has a big house and he locked us, we are loving people because we are working for that company, the case manager, he locked us in big house. So we spent about 47 days inside. We cannot go outside. Within the 45, 47 days, one of those revolution, I can say just a malicious, they came before he locked the door, they came in the middle of, I don't remember, it's 11 days, something like that, they came over, they killed one of the friends we were living with inside the house and they just simply killed over two days. We cannot do anything. We don't have cell phones. The good thing, we have a food inside. And our case manager, he came over, I think spent three, four days after our friend killed, he came over and he locked the door from outside. That's the reason he locked the door from outside is because if someone came, he see this door locked, he thinking there's nobody there. So yeah, after that, Red International Cross, our case manager, he called Red International Cross and they came and pulled us out from that situation. It was difficult. I cannot, I don't know, it's hard to believe. So from there, okay, from there, me and our friends, you know, simply UNSCR, they move us to Benghazi, Benghazi is in East of Libya. And then from there, I went to another refugee camp in Egypt. From Egypt, I spent two years, similar thing. So from Egypt, I went to Romania, help with the guy, you know, the organization they helping us is simply UNSCR. They move us from Egypt to Romania. So from Romania, I spent six months and then I came here to Vermont. So that thing is, a lot of things happened but I couldn't mention a lot. And last year, I just tried to remember this, Miss Susan. Last year, last June, my mom was sick. So I tried to take care of her because of she need someone to take care of her. And again, I need something to travel. And I applied for travel document and it's kind of, you cannot getting fast, you're gonna need six, seven months in order to get that. So she helped me for that. And I'm gonna say thank you, thank you so much. You saved my mom life. Thank you for that. So I went to India and I take care of my mom and she's now, she's good. So I'm gonna just take a minute and gonna thank you all of you guys, Lori, Susan and Ligget family living there. So thank you everybody. Those people, they just supported me. So again, I guess thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. With our next speaker, we shift our focus a bit to thinking about the migrant worker community here in Vermont. Will Lembeck is a staff member of Migrant Justice and a proud graduate of Montpelier High School. Migrant Justice's mission is to build the voice, capacity and power of the farm worker community and engage community partners to organize for economic justice and human rights. Welcome, Will. Thank you, Joan. Thank you, Center Vermont Refugee Action Network for putting on this panel and to all the previous speakers, how folks feeling ready for another two? We can do it. All right, if you need to get up to have a cookie or use the bathroom and stretch your legs, I won't be offended, don't worry about it. So as Joan said, I grew up in Montpelier, just down the road, worked at the Ben & Jerry Scoop Shop in City Center. For those of you who follow Migrant Justice's work, you might appreciate the irony of that. And growing up here, my idea of Vermont and the people in it sort of looked similar to what this room looks like tonight. I understood it to be a majority, a predominantly white space and immigrant sort of meant flatlander, it meant you came from New Jersey or Massachusetts. And it wasn't until I found out about the work of Migrant Justice that I realized that down the road from where I grew up, working in the dairy farms were immigrant workers and that our state's most important and certainly most iconic industry was almost wholly reliant on the labor of immigrant workers, primarily from Mexico and Central America. We estimate that about 90% of people who are hired working in dairy barns in Vermont today are immigrant workers. And the reasons for that are complex and the community is fairly new. This change over in the industry has happened within the past 20 or 30 years. And actually, is Joseph Gaines in the room? Okay, well, I figured he might be, this is his sort of event. He just shared a tremendous article, the name of the author I'm forgetting, but there's a lot of people talk about a push-pull factor when they talk about immigration. And in the case of Mexican workers in the dairy industry, the push and pull factors are really similar. I mean, the reasons why people are emigrating from Mexico and Central America have everything to do with the United States. Our history and ongoing reality of imperial foreign policy, particularly as it's enacted through trade policies that displace folks, force them off their lands, prevent their ability to make a living, and in essence, force them as economic refugees to come to the United States. And it just so happens that those same neoliberal trade policies and processes of corporate consolidation and globalization are giving Vermont family farms a real raw deal. Many small producers have gone under in the past decades. There was something like 10,000 dairy farms across Vermont in 1950. There's around 750 today. And in order to survive, farms are having to buy up their neighbor's herds and lands and grow. And who are they going to hire to work these larger farms? Immigrant workers, the cheapest labor they can find. And the majority, the vast majority of those workers, although certainly not all, and we never make an assumption when talking about any particular worker, any particular farm. But the vast majority of those workers are undocumented because for a person from Mexico or Central America coming to the US to work in agriculture and particularly dairy, there's really no, there's no path to citizenship. There's no path to get a visa to come and do that work. The opportunities for doing it as the right wing would call the right way or to get in line are nil. And so structurally, the industry relies on undocumented labor. And the conditions, people often talk about feeling like prisoners on your farm. Imagine for a minute being brought to Vermont, being dropped off on a farm in the middle of the night. You're shown your housing, you're shown where the dairy barn is. You don't know where you are, you don't know, oftentimes even the name of the farm. But what you do know is that if you step foot off the farm to go into town, to go hang out in a park, to go see a movie, that you're putting yourself at risk of being arrested. So people talk about the state of feeling like a prisoner on the farm. And migrant justice grew out of that community and grew out of those conditions. In 2009, a young dairy worker named Jose O'Beth was killed while working on a farm in Franklin County, Vermont in a very gruesome and very much preventable workplace accident. And his death was really a spark and a wake up call for the community to start coming together and talk about what can be done about our situation in this state. And the organization formed through a series of regional assemblies, people meeting together to talk about those collective problems and start to envision collective solutions. And as an organization, Migrant Justice has been founded around a human rights framework, talking about what are the human rights of farm workers? What are the human rights of immigrants living in Vermont? And how can this organization be a vehicle to take collective action to win and advance those human rights? And so we've done that through a number of campaigns. In 2013, winning access to driver's licenses for all immigrants regardless of documentation status, which is at a tremendous impact on people's lives in this state. In 2014 and beyond, beginning to organize and win progressively stronger what are called fair and impartial policing policies, although in many places they might be known as sanctuary policies across the state of Vermont, work which continues and that I'll come back to. And then most recently, winning the first of what we hope will be many milk with dignity agreements. The idea being that corporations, dairy brands are ultimately responsible for the conditions in their supply chain. And when they're selling you a product that's built on the abuse and exploitation of workers, they need to take responsibility for rectifying those abuses. And last October, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream became the first company to formally recognize that by signing an agreement, joining the milk with dignity program and the implementation of that program is underway, meaning that Ben and Jerry's pays a premium, a higher price and in return, its suppliers commit to upholding a worker authored code of conduct that they're going to respect the human rights and dignity of the workers on those farms. And that's leading to a whole host of improvements in wages, scheduling, housing, health and safety among other conditions. But of course, we're here tonight to talk about immigration enforcement. And one thing I wanna mention and I know Duff will touch on this as well. And what's often being lost I think in the coverage of the atrocities of the Trump administration is that the continuities of immigration enforcement for administration administration and from year to year are much greater than the differences. And by that I mean that the lived reality of immigrants in Vermont has changed under the Trump administration much less than many people might believe. That the reality of being at risk of detention and deportation for driving to the grocery store as an example has always been there for workers. They've always suffered from criminalization from xenophobia and nativism, from racial profiling. And in essence, what the Trump administration has done is that they've taken the machinery of mass deportation built by the Obama administration and are running it at full speed. The Obama administration deported more immigrants in the eight years that he was in office than any previous presidential administration has done. And although the numbers of immigrants being deported and detained under the Trump administration is staggering, it doesn't rise to the levels that we saw in 2013 in most categories. So in Vermont, what does immigration enforcement look like? It looks like undercover agents of immigration customs enforcement hunting down dairy workers across the state, arresting people in parks and grocery stores outside of banks on the curb as they're taking the trash out. And it means officers from CBP, Customs and Border Protection, rampantly profiling workers anywhere within the vicinity of the Northern border, pulling people over for driving while brown, detaining them and putting them in deportation proceedings. What we're seeing is about one person a week is being arrested in the state of Vermont by either ICE or Border Patrol. And in particular, one example that we've seen is ICE's retaliation against workers who protest these horrendous actions. In Vermont, we've seen a number of community leaders and human rights defenders, particularly targeted by ICE because of their activism because they're exercising their First Amendment right to speak up and defend their rights and defend their dignity as immigrant workers in this state. So what can be done? Michael Justice asks that people who are horrified by what's happening, who feel that this is a moral stain on our country, who wanna say not in my name, that you seek out and support the organizing, being led by immigrants, being led by directly affected communities. And because I'm in Montpelier, one example of that that I'll mention is in the fair and impartial policing policy. So Montpelier right now has an opportunity to strengthen its fair and impartial policing policy, a policy that should draw a bright red line between the role of the Montpelier Police Department and immigration enforcement, yet currently it's much more of a porous fence, let's say. And Michael Justice has been in conversation with various people in the current administration. Can we say that in Montpelier? With Anne, it's not really an administration. And I think folks are really receptive to change, but it would help a lot for people who live in Montpelier to get Anne on the phone, talk to your counselors as well and say this is an issue that we care about. Montpelier in no way should be doing the work of deportation and we wanna make sure that our city and our resources is not complicit in this human rights tragedy that's happening today. And then also I wanna announce June 25th at the State House, a coalition of groups is organizing a rally. June 25th, it's a Monday night, 6 p.m. at the State House lawn specifically focused on ending family separation. And it's called the first day of no school rally. It's sort of to commemorate, it's the day after school's out, many families in Vermont are gonna be spending more time together and in doing so we should remember those families who are being torn apart. Thank you. Thank you, Will. Our final speaker on our panel this evening is James Duff Lyle. James has been the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont since 2016. Prior to that, he was a staff attorney for the ACLU of Arizona where he investigated and litigated civil rights issues related to the US-Mexico border. James also has experience representing detained and unaccompanied immigrant children in the Los Angeles area in deportation proceedings. Welcome, James. Thanks, John. Thank you, everybody. And thanks to the organizers and to the panelists. It's really a great honor to be here and to hear a lot of powerful experience among this group. So I'm the last to go. I'll try and keep it brief so that we can get to your questions and then have a discussion. I could talk all night about immigrant rights and these issues, but I will try not to do that so that we can have some questions. But I mean, I was gonna talk a little bit about some of the work that the ACLU is doing and a little bit, as Will indicated, it's not the first time I've followed Will and essentially wanted to just agree with everything he said, what he said, and that's it. But to say a little bit about the continuity between this administration's policies and past policies because I think that is really important to recognize and understand if we're ever going to change it. And so to do that, in the course of talking a little bit about the ACLU's work, I also wanna talk about my experience, not as an immigrant or working with immigrant workers, but representing and fighting for the civil rights of immigrants and trying to counter the abuses and excesses of immigration officials that they encounter. So my first job out of law school was at an organization called Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project in Los Angeles. There, most of my work involved representing indigent, unaccompanied children who had come to this country on their own and been apprehended and placed in deportation proceedings without the right to an attorney. So a lot of people don't even realize that immigrants do not have the right to enter an attorney when they're in deportation proceedings. Criminal defendants generally especially with serious charges, everybody has the right to an attorney provided by the government if you can't afford it. That is not true of immigrants. That includes immigrant children of any age, infants, toddlers, teenagers. And so my work was to, and that is still the case, the ACLU actually has been litigating a case to try and win the constitutional right to representation for immigrant children. We had a big setback in February where a three judge panel in the Ninth Circuit in California essentially ruled that children do not have a constitutional right to be represented by a lawyer when they're facing deportation proceedings and are facing off against a skilled and adult ICE attorney. So that is the state of the law now. And so that's why I was in Los Angeles to represent at least some of those children, many of those children that could and there are organizations around the country that do that, also good organizations to support. And so most of my children were teenagers who had fled horrific violence and abuse in Central America and Mexico. Many of them had traveled on top of freight trains through Mexico. Many of them were abused, beaten and neglected along the way. Somehow made it to the United States where they were apprehended and often faced additional abuse at the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol along the border, placed into custody and placed in removal proceedings and then my work was to represent them. And so a lot of those kids, all of the children that I represented now have green cards. They are, by now they've graduated, they've been married, they've started families, they own businesses. But the fact is that they had to go through a lot and there are still many, many children and many people who don't have the legal representation that they need to win their cases. And I mean, the statistics show if you don't have an attorney and you're facing deportation, your chances of winning are much, much, much lower than if you are represented by counsel, which shouldn't be surprising. So after a few years of that, I, having heard about the experiences of these kids along the border, I went to the border. I took a summer to volunteer with an organization called No More Deaths, which is a humanitarian aid organization that operates in Southern Arizona and South of Tucson. And No More Deaths and a couple of other similar groups for years have been leaving food and water and medical supplies along desert trails where migrants cross into the United States and where hundreds of people that we know of and probably many more that we never know about die every year trying to cross the border. And they do this in large part because the existing border infrastructure, for all the talk of building more walls, the fact is there are already a lot of walls along our border and a lot of border militarization designed to drive people into the deadliest and most remote sections of our border where they are more likely to die and where hundreds of them do die every year. That is an intentional U.S. border policy that again goes back decades. That is not new. The new border wall isn't going to be a departure from that. It's just U.S. policy designed to deter people with a threat of death from coming to this country regardless of what violence they're fleeing. Regardless of whether they're fleeing for their lives. The calculus is that the fear of perishing in the desert will be so great that they will not enter the country. And so doing that work, among other things, I encountered some U.S. Border Patrol agents and I came to get to know the U.S., started to get to know the U.S. Border Patrol. I've since gotten to know them even better. But I learned everything I needed to know pretty early on. The U.S. Border Patrol, working for no more deaths, I saw walking the trails and leaving water that a huge number of humanitarian aid supplies, almost half of the water bottles that we would leave out would be destroyed by Border Patrol agents. Be slashed, kicked, thrown into ditches and confiscated. And this is life-saving humanitarian supplies that was being destroyed by the Border Patrol. I also saw the Border Patrol has a long history of harassing and even prosecuting humanitarian aid workers. There are currently multiple no more deaths volunteers who are facing federal charges for harboring undocumented immigrants when they were in the course of doing essentially humanitarian life-saving work. And so to see the Border Patrol not only enacting a policy that is designed to endanger people's lives, but then doubling down and affirmatively acting to ensure that life-saving supplies do not reach them and that they're more likely to die, that told me all I needed to know about U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Border Policy. But that was not the end of my work. I after that summer, I got a job with the ACLU of Arizona as a staff attorney. And there I worked on Border Patrol issues quite a bit. Before that, actually, I was in Phoenix and was drawn to Arizona because at the time we were dealing with ACLU and others were dealing with litigating SB 1070, the Show Me Your Papers Law, the Anti-Immigrant Law in Arizona, and its chief proponent and practitioner, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who the ACLU sued out of business over the court and I was not involved in that, but I saw my colleagues very much were, as well as the entire community in Maricopa County was involved in resisting and eventually getting Sheriff Arpaio kicked out of office. He was then prosecuted, convicted of, what was the charge? Contempt, thank you. Of course, he was then pardoned by President Trump. But there I saw the really first hand, the devastating impacts of empowering or allowing local officials to act as immigration agents and that is why the fair and impartial policing policy that Will referenced earlier is so important because in my experience, whenever local police or local enforcement try to get involved in the immigration business, constitutional rights violations are a guarantee that it turns from night to day. Local cops are not empowered to and are not able to enforce immigration law in a constitutional manner and nor should they. So I would second and reiterate what Will said about the importance of getting a strong division between our local police here in Vermont and immigration officials. I mean, my other work with the Board of Patrol involved a number of lawsuits. The ACLU is currently, and I'm not obviously on the border anymore, but the ACLU is currently litigating the policy of forced separation of families. And we had a good decision recently with the court, again in the Ninth Circuit, denying the government's motion to dismiss. We are hoping to get an injunction to stop this practice, but even if we do, it will be a limited injunction and will not end a lot of these practices. But just because I'm short on time, I'll just say, whether it's forcing people into the desert, whether it's prosecuting border crossers to the fullest extent of the law, whether it's abusing children in custody, which I also documented and saw a lot of in Arizona, or whether it's forced separation of families. All of this comes under the rationale of U.S. border policies, policy of deterrence. Again, that you make things so miserable and you inflict so much pain and suffering and misery on people that no matter what they're fleeing, they're not gonna come here. And that has been U.S. border policy for a long time, for decades, and we're just seeing an even more extreme and inhumane and monstrous version of that right now. So. Thank you again to all of our speakers this evening. The knowledge and the experience that you all have shared is just so incredibly powerful. I think from our speakers, we've gotten the broad scope of the political landscape and policies that impact immigrants and refugees now living in Vermont. We've heard personal stories of struggle that led to people arriving here and the continued struggle, especially now in trying to live just normal lives and be reunited with family. And also stories of the human rights abuses faced by many immigrants and migrant workers living here in Vermont. So our forum this evening, Borders and Walls, is designed to help create a deeper understanding of who new Vermonters are, the obstacles they face, and what's being done to support them and keep them safe amongst us here in our community. And now we have time for your questions from the audience. I'm gonna check in with our organizers. Is there a microphone set up? There's a microphone that will be passed around. I wanna show you guys, it's really important that you put the microphone in front of your mouth because if you're like this, you can't be heard. So just keep it like that, okay? Great, and I think Pam will come around. You can just raise your hand to indicate if you have a question, does that work? And I'll ask you to keep your questions brief. You can direct your question to a particular panelist if you have a question that's for someone in particular or just raise a general question, and I'm sure amongst our group, they'll be able to address it. Don't be shy. Okay, Kate, great. I'm gonna cross in front of you, okay? This is so we can all hear. Thank you. Will, I didn't, what is driving well brown? I believe you said that. Did you say that? I don't know what that is. Thanks for the question. It's a shorthand to refer to racial profiling by their police or immigration enforcement. So often times when you read arrest reports by Border Patrol about what was the suspicion that caused them to pull over a car, they'll write things like subject was driving in a way that led me to believe he was an illegal alien. And that's one of a number of pretexts that Border Patrol will use that are so flimsy on the face that we know that the only alternative can be racial profiling. So the term is actually sort of adopted from black organizers who have been talking about driving well black as the experience of racial profiling. And so driving well brand comes from that. Okay, Jose. I guess I just wanted to make a quick comment. I just came back from Mexico City this weekend and had a lot of discussions about this, but today I was on the phone because I used to volunteer and I also worked along the border where they're planning to build this tent city. It was just on the edge of the district that I worked with the state rep of that area. And I want you to know that this is a horrific place, it's a very remote location. It is exactly what was being mentioned earlier. It's a policy of the Border Patrol to squeeze from both coastlines to the most remote, most dangerous places. And that is the Big Bend region, which is a fairly remote area of Texas, which would be they're trying to push people to go towards Sierra Blanca, which is where they are as a private facility run by Emerald Corporation. They used to have a tent there and I used to go visit. I spent a year going to these facilities and visiting people and the conditions that at least the adults that I saw that were being held there were inhumane and I think it's a crime. I spoke to people today down there who were organizing in the town that I was in and the attorneys I used to work with and there's a team out of San Antonio and there's some local attorneys that are trying to get organized, but they really don't know how to, but they move in such a way that it's difficult to approach the problem, but there's certainly people on the ground right there and anything that you can do to, of course, as you might know, our congressman is going down Sunday to Brownsville, but anything that you can do to write representatives, senators, put pressure because my friends down there feel that really it's gonna take action, congressional action, to really make any change happen. Thank you. So I have two questions, which I hope is okay. One is, is there an estimate of undocumented immigrants that work and live in Vermont? And then two, is there a basis for where refugees get resettled in the US like a process? Is it based on the states or the communities? Does anyone have an estimate for the first question, the number of undocumented immigrants living and working in Vermont? Does the lady have that? No, I mean, you know, and Will, what do you think in terms of migrant workers about 700? We had been seeing 1200 and then we heard it was more like 700. We keep with the 12 to 1500 migrant workers and as I said, the vast majority of whom are undocumented, but certainly not all. And then you can add to that some unknown number. I mean, there's no way to know. In terms of, and maybe Lori can't help with this too, in terms of refugee resettlement, as Elta said and Tun said, it comes through UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. So they're the ones who decide whether somebody can be classified as a refugee and then there are agreements with countries all around the world and in the United States, it's a decision that goes with the administration in terms of how many refugees will be accepted in the United States. And then there are, how many volacs? Seven, nine, there are currently nine volunteer, I'm not gonna remember what volac stands for, but there are nine nonprofit organizations, Catholic Charities, Methodist, US CRI, a number of other organizations, so it's the HIAC, HIAS. And so they, these nine organizations then are, have to go through a process of figuring out what communities can support refugees and they get, then they'll be assigned a certain number on an annual basis. So each organization that has a contract with the State Department to resettle refugees has to apply every year to show that they have the capacity and determine what capacity they have and then the State Department, PRM, Population Refugee Migration, that Bureau of the State Department confirms whether they agree or not with the number that can be resettled. And that's a maximum number, that's not a minimum number of refugees that can come. How a refugee ends up in Vermont. If there is a family member, if there is a tie in Vermont, ideally they would be coming to Vermont, but oftentimes refugee families are split up even around the world, not just within the US. So they might be coming to Vermont for that reason. If they have no ties anywhere, then the State Department meets with the nine volacs and each site that resettles refugees has certain capacities to resettle people and one of the most important consideration is is there a community there of the person or the family, the case that's going to be resettled because one thing that our country is getting right is understanding people need a peer group. So instead of scattering people randomly around the country the idea is to have a cultural community within the greater community so people have a peer group to support them and then they also have the support of the greater community. And so basically once a week, the nine organizations meet with the State Department and it's almost like a sports draft. They take their turns, pass around the cases and say, yes, we are resettling Ethiopians and it looks like we could resettle this family, we'll take this case and then they just go around until all the cases are accepted. And one thing that Lori was just reminding me that with the reduction in the number of refugees that are gonna be allowed to come to the United States we've heard that the Department of State is going to not renew all nine volac contracts. They're gonna be forced to either consolidate or disappear and USCRI and all the other volacs they get funding per person who is resettled. So the lesser number and that's what Lori was referring to before people, organizations are having to lay off staff and basically what's happening is the dismantling of the refugee resettlement infrastructure. I mean it's just going to, there are offices that are closing and people are very fearful of what that long-term impact's gonna be because hopefully with the change of administration it'll ramp up again but you know you have to then rebuild. Until fairly recently I was unaware that Vermont hosts about 400 ICE workers and I'm curious if what it would take for us to reconsider that. Lori said that question's for me and I said I know it's for me but I'm pretending it's not. It really has to do with the staffing that's gonna be determined by the administration. I mean I guess Congress could say we're not gonna fund X number of ICE workers that would be interesting in this climate to see. So I don't have a better answer for you than that. I also wanna recognize one of my congressional delegation colleagues who's here. Sheila Reed from Senator Sanders office who does work with farmers and agricultural. Anything else you'd like to add to that? So women, children, housing and disabilities is part of Sheila's portfolio too so I just wanna welcome Sheila here as well. I had a question about what happens when someone gets a green card. I know that it can be renewed but there are two parts to the question. Can it be renewed over and over again or is there a limit on the number of times it can be renewed and if you have a green card if you have a green card are you still in danger of being deported? May I take that one? So yes you can renew your green card. You have to renew your green card every 10 years but after having a green card for five years you can apply to become a US citizen or if you've gotten your green card through marriage to a US citizen you only have to wait three years before applying to become a US citizen. There's no limit to the number of times you can renew a green card but you are always in danger of losing that green card. For example, if you commit a felony and there are other, mainly that or if you found to have lied to the US government or misrepresented anything in order to get your green card or to enter the United States that can jeopardize your status as a lawful permanent resident. So that's why and I think that's why Tony is seeing so many people applying to become citizens because they want to have that because you cannot have your citizenship taken away from you again unless you have lied to the US government in getting that citizenship. So that's the situation for green cards. So we've got a question back here and there are lots of questions which is great. I've been reading a lot of reports about buses, the Amtrak trains being boarded by folks asking for documentation and a lot of the stuff that I read said, they can't do that if it's not within 100 miles of a border. Well, we're in Vermont, it's all within, I don't know, maybe there's like a little bit of Southern Vermont that isn't. So I was curious what the actual border, if what that 100 mile buffer zone means in terms of the ability to be asked for documentation and then I guess if somebody has any thoughts about what people could do who were legally here if that was a situation to try and, I don't know, short circuit that or like be helpful. And also I don't carry around my documentation of my citizenship so I technically would be in trouble if that's really 100 miles to the, so just trying to figure out what we can do and what they're allowed to do. It's a great question. So it depends on the context that we're talking about and I have brought some know your rights information about what are your rights with Border Patrol in the border region. So I encourage people who are curious about this to take a look at that. But I mean Border Patrol has increased enforcement powers within a reasonable distance of the border which has been defined as 100 miles. I think that's not a reasonable distance and Senator Leahy and others have repeatedly proposed shortening that distance significantly to 25 miles I believe and we would certainly support that. This goes back decades to like the 1950s regulations set reasonable distance at 100 miles. At that point there were like 2,000 Border Patrol agents. There are now 20,000 Border Patrol agents. So I mean depending whether they are setting up a checkpoint or whether they are pulling you over in your vehicle, whether they're entering onto your land, whether they're trying to board a Greyhound bus or an Amtrak chain. I mean the rules can vary depending on the context but a few things to keep in mind is they do not have a right to search you without probable cause although they often deny that or pretend that that's not the case. The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search applies in the interior of the country still even with the Border Patrol something that they are either unaware of or pretend to be unaware of. They need reasonable suspicion to make a vehicle stop. They cannot stop people on the basis of race. I mean they do all of these things but that's why it is really important to know what your rights are and to safely assert them. As to Greyhound buses, I mean the ACLU sent a letter to Greyhound a few months ago. We also locally sent a follow up letter to some of the local bus line Peter Pan and I think Concord coach lines. Essentially saying as a private business you don't have to allow the Border Patrol to board your buses. I mean they're allowing this to happen but I mean DHS even has its own regulations saying that private businesses don't have to go along with this. And so far Greyhound has not wanted to engage with that. They essentially buy Border Patrol's argument that the regulations say that we can. The Border Patrol again ignores that the regulations have long since been interpreted by the US Supreme Court as limiting their authority. I mean the Fourth Amendment controls here and a lot of times we see Border Patrol sort of misleading people or overstating the degree of authority they have and they all too often get away with it. So again I think it is really important that people know their rights and we do have some materials to help with that. I'd like to add one thing to that. Sometimes ICE shows up because someone in the community calls them. And you could be painting while black. I mean you could be existing, breathing and not be white and have a concerned neighbor call and report you and you better have your papers with you. So I also would like to share one thing. You know like at the bus station arresting or the Border Patrol checking on you it might be doing more now than before but it's not new. I have to share my own experience. It was in I don't know the 2006 long time ago. I was traveling to MediBerry. I was visiting to a friend of mine and then coming back and I was in Burlington at the Greyhound bus station and I was buying a ticket and after that I bought a ticket and sat down and then about like five minutes later a police walking and then he walked straight to me. No one else, no one asked any questions and then he asked me for my identifications. So at that time I was just traveling here and there so I did not bring my IDs with me. I left in Burry. I was living with a host family then and then they said I don't have any ID. So they took me to all the way to border to the sale of my high gate and then they kept me there for like five hours. And then finally they found all the people. I explained everything, you know, I came here here legally, I have all the people you can look at in the your system and everything. They said we check, we don't have it but when I got there for after five hours they let me go. I'm gonna add one more story to that. Border patrol used to do an occasional stop down in White River Junction on I-91 and I-91, yeah. And one time a tall balding white gentleman and his wife were driving up from Washington DC and that he got pulled over by border, by CVP there and he was asked to get out of the car. And when the driver said under what authority are you asking me to get out of the car, this young agent pointed to his firearm and said under this authority, at which time Senator Leahy did get out of the car and asked to speak to a supervisor and you know those that stopped shortly after that but it's something that you can only, he wasn't detained for five hours, like 10. But it had a lasting impact and one of the reasons that I think he's so vociferous in trying to get that 100 mile border limit changed. That also, again, I'm not making this up. That also, and that's the same place, you know, the I-91. I was, again, pulled over. When my host family, you know, like my first year, I'm here and then they were like, they want me to take to New York City. I was so excited, we all were in the car, you know, we drove up there. The police, you know, they pulled over and because of me, they pulled over there. And then my host family was like, to say we're in our life, we'll never get pulled over until we host you. I'm like, yeah, welcome to the world. Welcome to my world, you know. So everybody. Right now, we have five people waiting to ask questions, okay? And they're sort of in the back and I'll come around to the front in just a minute. So we need to keep our questions brief, okay? So everybody gets a chance. Thanks. Thanks. My question's aligned to the comment from the participant from the audience about how people are scrambling right now about the parental separation issue that's going on at the border. I work in healthcare and I know of no major organization, academic, public health that aren't writing letters, you know, sending in statements, posting things on their websites, organizing students and residents. We're doing all of those things, but no one's really clear that that's gonna do much. I don't know of a central piece of legislation that's being considered or whether there's a champion. I know as of this morning, you know, people were trying to pull together clusters, but is there a piece that would be worth really focusing on? I was saying earlier, there is a standalone piece of legislation called Keeping Family. Keeping Families, I'm sorry, I have it right here. Yes, it's a standalone and it has, you know, 40, at last counted for me, I saw 40 senators who had signed on, but I haven't seen a single Republican senator sign on to that standalone bill. There's something being talked about in the Compromise House Immigration Bill that's minor. I don't think it will be that effective, but that's what I'm hearing. So I would urge you to continue to do everything you're doing and continue to urge your friends in other states, especially, to continue to do what they're doing, but I think all the pressure is needed. Other people wanna chime in on that, James? Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. I mean, on all of these issues, including family saturation, it's important that we educate ourselves about what's going on, that we educate our friends, family, neighbors, especially people who disagree with us in Vermont and out of state, get them to vote. Anybody who didn't vote in the last election is now upset about family separation. Get them to vote in the next election. I mean, that, I mean, it matters, it matters. I'm putting pressure not just on local elected officials, although, I mean, locally, local elected officials can't do a lot about family separation specifically, but a lot of the solutions, a lot of these problems have, and their solutions have local roots, and so there's a lot of work to engage in fair and impartial policing policy here in Vermont. Not just local, state, and federal policy makers, but businesses, I mean, we need to be doing all of the things that we're doing and more litigating, I mean, all of that, and supporting the organizations that do the work, including here in Vermont, groups like Migrant Justice, including the Southwest border or the organizations that are representing these children and these families and have been for a long time, I mean, all of that. Yeah. It would be great to get people from other states to push their senators to sign onto the Keeping Families Together Act, which was initiative of Senator Feinstein then with Senator Leahy and 48 other senators, and I believe Senator Sanders is on it as well. I'm not sure exactly when it was, but I think in the 80s, I was part of the network, refugee network here, and there were families that were hosted and the requirements for what they needed to have here was very loose. You could have them in an extra room and so forth. But what I wanna say was that people would frequently stay here for maybe three months, and then volunteers would drive them over the border to Canada, and they were received, I mean, this was with lawyers and all that, and they were received, and I'm wondering if there's anything like that, if Canada is rising to the occasion and saying, wow, this is going on in the U.S., maybe we can offer asylum to some of these people, like the families being separated. So it's Canada at all involved with our issues now or willing to step up and. Canada's also changed their laws, and so it was much harder for people to be able to either get into Canada or to be accepted, but then there, but if a person presents and is able to assert a case for asylum, people are being accepted into Canada, and I know somebody that I was working with who was about to face deportation and wound up being very well welcomed in Canada actually didn't even go through that place that you've read about in New York, Upper New York State, but he actually presented at the border with his family who are all U.S. citizens, and he was housed, they were told exactly what was gonna happen, he was granted 18 months to, so he could stay and be able to prove his case for asylum, so I've heard both things about Canada, but I think it is still an option for some people, but not economic refugees, it really has to be a true case of needing asylum, because now, as we know, the categories, and James might be able to speak more, what Attorney General Sessions has just done to limit people's ability to be granted asylum and the instruction he has given to immigration judges is unspeachless, but people who are a victim, fleeing domestic violence or fleeing gang violence, and these are thousands, if not tens of thousands of applicants who are now in serious jeopardy of being deported and being denied asylum. Yeah, I would just add that my understanding is that the majority, though, of asylum applications in Canada are being rejected when people come from the U.S., so many people sort of hear the discourse of Trudeau and others saying, we welcome all comers and there's this very rosy picture that's painted, but people are being detained and many of them are ending up in deportation as their asylum applications are rejected. I don't know, with the most recent changes from Sessions, how that might impact people whose applications could be rejected in the U.S., whether, what Canada would say, look at those. I have heard that the word sanctuary used in a lot of situations. Churches talk about sanctuary. Cities, I see a store says it's a sanctuary. Is that a naïve option? Or what's the situation in Vermont or even around the country concerning sanctuaries? I can feel that, but other folks can hop in. The term means a lot of different things to a lot of people, so there's no formal definition in the context of churches. Oftentimes it's meant to refer to physical refuge, somebody who's at high risk of deportation, whether they have a final order of removal or whether they're out on a conditioned release and they believe that at their next check-in they may be detained. We've seen religious communities around the country offer physical refuge for those people and that's based on a long-standing ICE policy called the Sensitive Locations Memorandum that agents in most circumstances aren't supposed to come into religious institutions or schools for that matter or marches and protests and parades as well. Courts used to be in that as well and that's been slowly cleaved out. There are a number of religious communities in Vermont that have considered this in Essex several months ago. There was an interfaith conference on sanctuary where there were a number of churches and synagogues present to talk about that. From my injustices perspective, this isn't a priority need. Nobody's come to us. We haven't had discussions with any members who say, I wanna take sanctuary in a church, tell me my options. It's a last case and worst case scenario. Taking sanctuary in a church is akin to self imprisonment. It means that you're choosing to live within four walls and tragically many people around the country are making that decision because the alternative of being deported and separating from family is worse but it's never an option that people want to pursue and it's one strategy among many that communities are using to keep themselves safe or mitigate risk and it's not a strategy that people have particularly chosen in Vermont. I think we can take a couple more questions, Pam. I'm a guardian at Lightham. My name is Nancy and is there any other guardian in the audience? No. Okay, and we have, it's the state requires that we be present in court when there is a juvenile without a parent acting as guardian but and we have contacted a bunch of us, have contacted the federal, not the federal but the overall organization of Casa Guardians and I wonder if there's any way that we can intervene when on a child's behalf in these kinds of cases. Okay, thank you. James, I think she's asking about whether or not to be able to be in court representing or helping children in court. In what court? In immigration courts. In immigration courts? Yeah. We're in court. It's that requirement. An immigration court is a specific court. It's not the same as federal court. It's a very specific court, specific judges. I know, I mean, I think you either have to be a barred attorney or an, I think they have accredited representatives. So I guess theoretically someone who could become an accredited representative it's usually through an organization like Esperanza and the Rights Project working there, almost like a paralegal. But so I don't, I'm not sure that would be quite the same thing. In the immigration court for Vermont is in Boston. There was a clinic, right, working here in Vermont with those that had children who were U.S. citizens in case they were, the parents were deported who were undocumented and then they'd be documents ready for someone to take custody, legal custody. So that's being done, I know I've been an interpreter. That's being done through Vermont Legal Aid in Burlington. So we'll have one more question and then begin to wrap up our time together. It seems that there's a distinction between agricultural workers who have seasonal rights to work in the country and Vermont dairy workers who don't. Is there any way, Will or Susan, that that inequity could be addressed? Senator Leahy keeps trying and you know, Will can talk about this as well and there's again, another bill that both Senators Feinstein and Leahy and others have been trying to get through which is an ag jobs bill that would create an appropriate visa for all agricultural workers. So right now, you're absolutely right. Because dairy farm workers are needed year round, they're not seasonal. So they're not like people who come to pick apples. Which is seasonal work. So there is a real visa for those workers, but there is nothing. And that's what Will was saying before. There's no way for a farmer to do it the right way and have somebody come through legal process. There is no legal process for that. Yeah, thank you Susan. Oh, sorry. And I would add to that as well. I think there are human rights centered solutions to that and then there are industry centered solutions to that. And one thing that migrant justice really strongly opposes is the expansion of the seasonal visa program to cover dairy. And the reason for that is one, for many, I mean, for much of US agriculture, even when it's seasonal, even when seasonal agriculture visas are an option, those industries are reliant on undocumented workers regardless. But two, any visa that ties somebody's presence in the country to their employment status is a recipe for exploitation and abuse. In essence, it's saying to the worker, if you speak up, if you advocate for yourself, if you defend your rights and you're fired, then that means you're deported as well because your visa is tied to your employment status. And so we would see the extension of these H2A visas, which is not what Susan is talking about. She's talking about a different solution, but what many people are talking about and what the Republicans are talking about is saying, oh yeah, dairy industry, we can get you documented workers, but that would be a tremendous loss for workers' rights and their ability to organize. And I think if H2A did exist for dairy workers, we wouldn't see a program like Milk with Dignity in Vermont, which is transforming conditions for farmers and farm workers, because there would be such a strong disincentive to organize. Great. I'm gonna just add one more thing. All these questions and this meeting, because of refugees, and once you said, I have an experience about what you got in the past. And I see myself, what challenge you have. And sometimes you can say I'm the master and I accomplished something, but at the end you figure out there's a lot out there. They have many thousands of problems. So I came by myself. My family, all are older, over 18, so I cannot bring someone. Now I'm living here four and a half years. Also, I'm married, my wife's there. So think about all those problems and please support us. Thank you. Just a moment, I'm going to invite Pam Walker from CVRAN to share some closing words for us. And just want to thank again, Susan, Lori, Tonsane, Altiyab, Will, and James for being on our panel this evening. Let's give them one more round of applause. And thank you to all of you for being here, for dedicating a Friday evening to trying to understand and to grapple with these ongoing and incredibly complex issues that for many people are rapidly changing and causing a lot of pain and struggle and your involvement obviously is really crucial to continuing to improve these circumstances. Pam, you have some closing words for us. Just final wrap up. Thanks again everybody for being here and it's been an immensely gratifying evening. When you look around, a lot of us turned out for this very, very important topic and our hearts have been moved, I know. CVRAN, Central Vermont Refugee Action Network, we're a young and growing organization and we're welcoming members. We meet the first and third Thursdays of every month at five over at Trinity Methodist Church and we have a lot of projects. We have great ideas and vision. We just need more people to kind of help us fulfill all of these ideas and dreams that we have. So over in this table, you'll see information about CVRAN, if you're interested, I'll take it for sure and you'll find out we have a website and we have a Facebook page that we're always working on and Diane, what else should I cover? Yes, there's a literature table, I believe. ACLU brought some materials, Migrant Justice brought some. Everybody did, so it's right over there just near the CVRAN table. And please help yourself to refreshments because we have a lot of good stuff here. If you have questions that didn't get answered, I know there were a few. I hope our panelists will be willing to stay around for a few minutes. So many thanks again to Colin McCaffrey for the sound and for his beautiful music and everybody else.