On July 24, Vermont State Police arrested 13 protesters, including Henry Dorr ’28, Kate Pressgrove ’29, Jackson Price ’28, Gabbie Ross ’28 and Roan Wade ’25, after they declined to to leave a business park that houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center.
Wade, who was arrested in February while protesting at the same facility alongside Geisel School of Medicine professor Donald Kollisch and 11 other individuals, said the “barricade” was part of an “ongoing campaign” by the unofficial group of Dartmouth and Vermont community activists to “shut down” the facility. On May 14, four individuals, none of whom were affiliated with the College, were arrested at the business park.
The facility processes “biometric and biographic” data to respond to 1.5 million queries from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies “regarding aliens suspected, arrested or convicted of criminal activity” annually, according to ICE’s website.
“This [facility] is an infrastructural node that enables the violence that we’re seeing across the country,” Wade said in an interview with The Dartmouth yesterday.
The thirteen people arrested last week were part of a group of a “few dozen” protesters who barricaded the doors to enter the business center starting at 7:30 a.m.; more protested outside, Wade said. Later that morning, the building owner told police that “the individuals were trespassing, refused to leave when asked, and requested that police remove them from the property,” the Vermont State Police wrote in a July 24 press release.
“State police, working in conjunction with the Williston Police Department, responded and spoke with protest leaders,” it reads. “That discussion led to several people leaving the inside of the building, while the others indicated they’d need to be arrested.”
Ross said she attended the sit-in to oppose ICE action in Dartmouth’s “backyard.”
The ICE facility is “only an hour and a half away from Dartmouth,” she said. “And it’s very upsetting how a place here has caused so much harm not just locally, but for communities as far as New York, Boston, Florida.”
Several of the arrested students told The Dartmouth they counted the day as a victory because protesters who stayed outside after the arrests told them that ICE employees could not work that day.
“We successfully prevented a day of work being carried out at this facility,” Wade said. “None of the ICE agents were able to attend work that day. They weren’t able to carry out their usual duties that result in the violence that we're seeing, so we considered that successful.”
Wade said that Vermont State Police were more violent towards them this time than the two previous demonstrations they attended.
“I was physically dragged out [of the building],” Wade said. “... I was pinned on the ground and cuffed. I was face down for an extended period of time with officers on top of me.”
The Dartmouth was not able to independently verify Wade’s description of events.
Vermont State Police spokesperson Adam Silverman wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that “generally,” “all uses of force” by officers are investigated under Vermont State Police policy. He declined to say whether any specific uses of force from the July 24 arrest are currently under investigation.
In the days after the arrests, a video of Vermont State Police carrying protesters out of the building has circulated on social media. The video’s author, Nathaniel Maddison, who was arrested along with the other protesters, described himself as a “citizen journalist.”
“Especially coming from a smaller state like Vermont that usually doesn’t get a lot of media coverage that to the rest of the country, I felt like I was successful in making sure as many eyes as possible saw this protest and also hopefully reading the caption that I wrote and hopefully watch the whole video and getting an idea of the role that Vermont is playing in the ICE crackdown being led by the Trump administration,” Maddison said.
After the February and May arrests at the Williston facility, Chittenden County State Attorney Sarah George declined to press trespassing charges against all protesters. If George decides to prosecute this instance of trespassing, protesters are scheduled to appear in court in September, according to the Vermont State Police press release.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Jackson Price ’28 declined to comment. Henry Dorr ’28 did not respond to a request for comment.
Jared Gonzalez Arce ’29 contributed to reporting.
Iris WeaverBell ’28 is a reporter and editor. She is from Portland, Ore., and is majoring in economics and minoring in public policy.
