This is the second story in a four-part series that examines how President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is unfolding in the Green Mountain State. Read the first story here.
Blanca and Samuel had a rare day off this past August, and they planned to make the most of it.
“We were planning on going out to meet some friends,” Blanca recalled recently, speaking through an interpreter. “We were going to go out for elotes. And so we got ready to go, we walked out of the door, happy and content, and that’s when it happened.”
Samuel was waiting in the car for Blanca when a man with a lanyard and badge approached him. Blanca watched from the apartment door in horror as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent reached inside the open car window and unlocked the driver’s side door.
Blanca and Samuel knew each other in Chiapas, Mexico, but became a couple here in the U.S. They live in Winooski with Blanca’s brother, Antonio, and his girlfriend Natasha. Their brother-in-law Guadalupe and his son, Emanuel, have also settled in Winooski.
The family would soon learn that, earlier that morning, Guadalupe and Emanuel had been picked up by ICE agents as well, during their morning commute to work.
For the last three years, the tight-knit family has been making a new life in Winooski. They’ve worked 70-plus hour weeks cleaning hotel rooms, or working in restaurant kitchens, or painting for local contractors. And they’ve used that income to support family back in Mexico, and build their new lives in Vermont.
On that fateful Wednesday morning in late August, they landed in the crosshairs of a mass deportation campaign that’s resulted in the arrest and detention of more than 100 Vermont immigrants over the past 10 months.
Antonio knew that fellow immigrants were being arrested and detained en masse in large cities like Los Angeles and New York. He did not expect the federal government’s deportation campaign to show up in the outskirts of Winooski.
“We had trusted in Vermont and had been really happy here. We felt safe — maybe we felt too safe, like we trusted too much that things were going to be OK for us here,” he said. “The last thing we thought was something like that would happen right in front of our door.”
For this series, Vermont Public's Peter Hirschfeld traveled up and down the state over the course of several months to speak with immigrant families, spending hours in their homes or at their school. This type of in-depth reporting is only possible thanks to the financial support of Vermont Public members. Become one by making your gift today.
The arrests’ aftermath
The shades were drawn on the ground-floor windows inside the family’s small apartment on a recent Saturday morning. The relative peace they had enjoyed prior to their family members’ arrests had been replaced by fear of who among them might be next.
“It’s changed almost everything. We haven’t felt the same since their detention. We feel this hole in our home that they left, and that can’t be filled. We spend our time thinking about how they are, worrying about their well-being, and also worrying about what’s going to happen to us,” Antonio said. “But despite that, we have to go on. We keep working. We know that the places that we work count on our labor, and we have to provide that.”
Samuel’s detention has upended household finances for Blanca. The money that she’d been sending back to Chiapas to support her 12-year-old daughter was now consumed by rent and other living expenses that Samuel had helped cover. Blanca said it’s been a rough transition.
“I’m remodeling a house in my hometown where my daughter can live, and [Samuel] was able to take care of the expenses here so that the money I earn could go to my daughter,” she said.
Antonio said he worried that people will assume his relatives have done something terribly wrong, and that they deserve to be sent back to Mexico.
“People should know that they’re good guys. They’ve been working hard since the moment they got to this country,” he said. “They came here because the economy in our country is broken, so they’ve been working here to make a better life. They haven’t been getting in trouble. They’ve done their best to get along with everybody they’ve met.”
None of the men has been charged by the federal government of committing anything other than an immigration-related offense.
The family sat down recently to enjoy a homemade lunch prepared for visitors — a tall stack of warm, paper-thin tortillas, carne asada, rice, salsa and cucumber slices. Hospitality, Antonio said, is a Chiapan custom.
“Our door is always open. And even if all we have to offer is a tortilla with some salt on it, it’s yours, because that’s how we are, that’s our culture, is to be welcoming,” he said.
As the family ate at the kitchen table, a call came in from Guadalupe at the North Lake Processing Center, a detention facility in Michigan.
Guadalupe said he’d been having a rough go of it. The facility was crowded and fights broke out often. He hadn’t been able to get the medicine he takes for his chronic gastritis.
“I have a family who relies on me for their income, for food, for shelter,” Guadalupe said. “And right now, I’m not able to provide for my wife, for an education for my kids, and that feels really bad.”
He said the nearly two months he’d spent in prison had taken a toll on his psyche.
“I feel grateful to this country. I’ve had opportunities here that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t come,” Guadalupe said. “But I would say to my community — you have to think hard before you come here and think about the risk you’re taking. Prepare well.”
In late October, the family got some welcome news.
Guadalupe and Emanuel were granted bond and returned to Vermont. And though the federal government is still arguing for their deportation, they’ll get to enjoy their freedom while they prepare their cases.
Guadalupe said he’s back at work and happy to be out of detention.
“Since being released, I guess I could say I’m a little bit more at ease now … but not fully,” he said.
Samuel has since pleaded guilty to the more serious charge of illegal re-entry, for having come back to the United States again after being told to leave previously. He’s awaiting his sentencing.
His partner, Blanca, said she’s talking publicly about their experience because she wants people to know how the Trump administration’s immigration policy translates at the human level.
“What I’m hoping for personally is that the people who are listening to this will understand the injustice that’s happening right now,” she said. “Because just like the people who are listening to this, we all work for a living. Just like they need us, we need them.” ■
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