MONTPELIER, Vt. — After six 12-hour shifts milking cows, José Molina-Aguilar’s lone day off was hardly relaxing.
On April 21, he and seven co-workers were arrested on a Vermont dairy farm in what advocates say was one of the state’s largest-ever immigration raids.
“I saw through the window of the house that immigration were already there, inside the farm, and that’s when they detained us,” he said in a recent interview. “I was in the process of asylum, and even with that, they didn’t respect the document that I was still holding in my hands.”
Four of the workers were swiftly deported to Mexico. Molina-Aguilar, released after a month in a Texas detention center with his asylum case still pending, is now working at a different farm and speaking out.
“We must fight as a community so that we can all have, and keep fighting for, the rights that we have in this country,” he said.
Ryan Brissette, spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said agents initially responded to a report from a concerned citizen who saw two people carrying backpacks entering private farm property near the Canadian border. Agents apprehended one person at the scene and more during the ensuing search of the area, he said.
The owner of the farm declined to comment. But Brett Stokes, a lawyer representing the detained workers, said the raid sent shock waves through the entire Northeast agriculture industry.
“These strong-arm tactics that we’re seeing and these increases in enforcement, whether legal or not, all play a role in stoking fear in the community,” said Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
That fear remains given the mi