Coming up on Vermont this week.

Outrage after a Vermont resident arrested by Ice agents.

You can tell from my voice I'm very angry.

I'm very fired up about it, because it could be any of us.

If they don't like the kinds of statements that we're making in public.

Plus, growing calls for Vermont's governor to cut some ties with the feds amid arrests and another lawsuit from Vermont against the Trump administration.

All that and more ahead on Vermont this Week.

From the Vermont Public studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont this week.

Made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

And thanks for joining us on Vermont this week.

I'm Cat Viglienzoni in for Mitch Wertlieb.

Joining us today Vermont public is Peter Hirschfeld.

Mark Johnson from 802 news podcast and Seven Days Kevin McCallum.

Thank you all for being here.

Well, one of the smallest states in the country finds itself in the national spotlight this week with two high profile immigration cases.

One, a Tufts University student whose arrest in Massachusetts has now made its way into a Vermont court.

And two, a Columbia University student who lives in Vermont and was detained by federal immigration agents during a hearing in Colchester, both cases sparking protests and strong reactions from legal experts, political leaders and community members in the Green Mountain State.

We can no longer say this is impossible to have happened in Vermont.

It has happened, and it's of tremendous constitutional implication for free speech reasons, he was targeted.

And if you no matter what your citizenship status, when you're in the United States, you have a First Amendment right.

That's how it works.

I really can't say enough about how much I love him and respect him, and and how saddened I and our whole community.

He wants to be a U.S. citizen.

He wants to be a Vermonter.

And Kevin, that reverend was talking about Motion Badawi.

What do we know about this case so far and why he was detained?

Well, news about his arrest spread like wildfire around the state on Monday morning, in part because there were videos that were taken on the scene of his arrest.

So we first started getting the information from these videos, but and it took a little time to figure out exactly why he was being detained and by whom.

But in the course of the last few days, we've learned that he was there for a naturalization interview.

Right.

He is a green card holder.

He's had one for ten years.

And he went in for this interview.

And I think there was some suspicion by him and his attorneys and his friends that this might be a pretext for taking him into custody, on some on some other violations or on some accusations that he had done some other things.

And sure enough, that's exactly what happened, right?

Agents wearing masks took him into custody, put him in an unmarked car and took him somewhere.

And then.

So that was trying to figure out where he was and what was happening.

So what we've come to learn is that he was, He was taken to, Correctional Institution in Saint, in, in Saint Albans.

He's held there and there was a, habeas petition that was filed by one of his attorneys to make sure that he remained in Vermont.

And so that is where it stands at the moment.

There was an intense concern among his supporters that he was going to be taken out of state.

And luckily for him at the moment, now he remains in state and his case is likely to be adjudicated here.

Interesting.

That you mentioned, you know, they kind of seem to have an idea that this might be a, you know, a set up almost to get him to come in.

I know he talked with CBS like 60 minutes I think, but like the day before right.

Thinking that this that this might be happening.

What does this say about, any of you to please feel free to weigh in on the on this about, you know, almost how people who think they might be a target are starting to try to protect themselves in advance.

Well, we've had now over a thousand students nationwide who've had their student visas canceled or, in jeopardy.

You know, we have this very, well publicized case about a man, who is sent back to El Salvador.

And, you know, I think what the consistent theme in all of these is a lack of due process and and the reasons for people being deported.

I mean, the young woman who went to Tufts that we're going to talk about, you know, wrote an op ed piece in opposition to what's going on, in Israel and Palestine.

You know, some of these people are being deported.

You know, the term that the secretary of state is using is that their presence or activities in the U.S. would have serious adverse foreign policy, consequences.

I mean, these are people that in large part are engaged in the kind of protests we saw against South Africa during apartheid.

You know, black lives matters.

So, you know, you really need some of these arguments, at least according to people that know, I think more than all of us about this who are legal scholars seem to be, you know, a little thin and, remains a has been held for three weeks now, in the entirety of the State Department.

Of the, federal government's case against her is a one paragraph memo issued by the State Department that says, she was involved in associations that, quote, may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students.

That's the evidence that we've seen against remains a ostrich.

And I think that's the that's the the argument that people like Representative Becca Allen are making, is that is so thin and so unsubstantiated is as to allow the government to use the same rationale to detain anybody who they want to.

And I think the element of, Mohsen Mahdi's arrest that people found so unnerving was that this is a permanent legal resident of the United States, right?

And so there was this sense that, okay, there is this incremental movement going closer and closer to a place a ballot would argue, where maybe when Mark Johnson said something that the Trump administration doesn't care for, you could become a target of interest.

Well, you know, Trump is the Trump administration is going after CVS for things that are being said on 60 minutes about the Ukraine war and with Russia and also the annexation of Greenland.

I mean, what I found really chilling was this comment that, some of these people are being deported because of past, current or expected beliefs, statements or associations.

That sounds a little to me like Pre-Crime very minority report.

Yeah.

I mean, it's total minority report.

And we're hearing statements from top Trump administration officials, including Caroline Leavitt, press secretary, saying when it comes down to it, it's really the sole discretion of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make these determinations as to whether or not somebody has fallen afoul of federal law in ways that that should subject them to deportation.

And I think that's another thing that a lot of people, are feeling uncomfortable with that, that the Trump administration's rationale is this person is a threat because we've decided we think that they're a threat.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying this week that he doesn't think this is a First Amendment issue.

He thinks visa and green card holders aren't entitled to be in the US, and that the country can decline their entry for whatever reason.

Peter, you think these issues then are likely to end up in front of the US Supreme Court?

Are, undoubtedly, you know, it won't be the first time that the nation's highest court has had to weigh in on actions and activities undertaken by the Trump administration thus far.

And, you know, that nine zero ruling related to the deportation of Kilmore, Abrego, has has raised some questions as to whether or not the Trump administration will will follow whatever rulings, the Supreme Court issued as well.

There was a, Reagan appointed judge this week that talked about the thumbing of the nose at the at the ruling in that case.

And, you know, these are these are people that have been on the bench for a long time who are seeing this.

You know, we I talked to Garrett Graff is a historian.

He talked about this, how things are out of balance between the executive, congressional and judicial branch.

And that's, you know, the tension that we've had now for hundreds of years in this country.

And it seems to be much more skewed toward the executive branch at this point.

I did want to briefly mention, because, Mark, you had brought up, student visas being revoked, we just learned today that Middlebury had, for student visas, revoked their, one international student and three alumni of their Middlebury Institute.

And I think, throw this question to you, Kevin, you know, this does this make this kind of, very much a local issue instead of a national?

I think many people saying, okay, well, that's things that the Trump administration doing that's a national issue.

Is this now really becoming a local issue, though?

Sure.

I think I think part of the outrage that, people are feeling was that on Monday, these two things were happening at the exact same time.

There was a there were protests outside a courthouse in Burlington over the Tufts student, and her case and where that was going to be, adjudicated.

And at the very same time those protests are happening, there's this news leaking out that there's a local person, a white River junction resident, green card holder who's been here for a decade, who has just been arrested in this manner.

So I think I think it really did bring home what has, you know, been percolating for a while as a national story and brought it home for Vermonters in a way that was really potent.

And I think that also, forced lawmakers to recognize that they needed to take action.

They needed to start, having conversations about how they can prevent things like this from occurring in the state.

Obviously, they have very few levers that they can pull to stop the federal government and immigration officials from operating in the state of Vermont, but they do have a few.

And those became the source of intense conversations in the state House this week.

And I know Pete has a good deal of information about one of the ways that they are talking about doing that.

Yeah.

So, Pete, go ahead on that.

Well, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Boru, the Senate majority leader from Hinsdale and Windsor, Senator Rebecca White, held an impromptu press conference calling on the Scott administration to terminate immediately the state's contract with Customs and Border Protection, which allows federal immigration authorities to house detainees in state prisons.

Phil Scott has pushed back on that idea.

He says, first of all, there's some logistical issues.

We have to give the feds 120 days notice before we terminate that.

Secondly, though, he says, there's probably value in a detainee being held in a state owned prison in Vermont, both in terms of the quality of the treatment that they're going to get and the jurisdiction in which their case is going to be heard.

And, in fact, there are some prominent immigration attorneys who said the governor's absolutely right about that.

If I have a client I want, I'd much rather have them in Northwest State Correctional Facility, where Mohsen Badawi is right now, than in a Louisiana jail where Ramez Ozturk is.

But I think it also more broadly sort of delineated the difference between lawmakers approach to this.

And the governor's and lawmakers say, you know, sure, it's limited what we can do, but we got to do something.

We got to show people we're on this.

We got to show people we care.

We got to make a statement of protest of the Trump administration.

And Phil Scott is saying, look, you're kidding yourself.

If you think there's anything meaningful that we can do here.

And he had a press conference on Wednesday that he dedicated.

He wanted to dedicate entirely to the issues of housing, education reform and public safety.

Kevin was there.

I don't think a single reporter asked a question about the things that Phil Scott wanted to talk about.

He is concerned that we've taken our eye off the ball of the things that Vermont can handle.

And I think he has some real concerns about the extent to which lawmakers and the media are shifting their focus almost entirely to the federal picture.

So he he might have a good point when it comes to not shutting down the the prison connection that's here, because one of the strategies that legal experts talk about that the administration is doing is that you separate people that you detained from their lawyer, their family, and you send them off somewhere else.

But where I think people are having some questions is whether or not, you know, Phil Scott, for example, had one of you had to ask him about this case before he said anything?

And I think what might reassure some people is if he were to come out at a press conference like that and to at least acknowledge this case before he's being asked about it, he tends to go up and say something that concerns him about the way in which the activity was conducted.

But he but in this case in particular, he has his, stood his ground essentially and said, no, I still think the underlying policy that we're that we have here with the federal government, the relationship that we have here with the federal government, is an important one, and one that we probably ought to hold on to.

Lawmakers are not done with this, though.

Lawmakers are not accepting that explanation.

Just this morning, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, they are crafting a bill that attempts to find a way to put some guardrails around future agreements about detention in the state of Vermont.

They are deeply concerned about the idea that people can be picked up in other states, brought here without the knowledge of their attorneys, and then whisked off to other parts of the country.

And they just see Vermont's, detention agreement with the federal government as helping facilitate that.

And so while they admittedly want to make sure that Vermont residents are kept local and not whisked off to other parts of the country, they do see us as maybe being a pawn in a broader federal scheme, a shell game, as several of them call it, and they want to put a stop to that.

And it's a tricky and it's going to be very difficult for them to find a way to do that.

But they're working hard on it right now.

Kevin, governor Scott is pretty popular among voters, including Democrats in Vermont.

Does the governor potentially face somewhat of a political thorn here, though, with prominent Democrats?

You know, I think Attorney General Cherry, clerk, treasurer.

Mike, check, others coming out with some stronger words about the Trump administration and their policies that might resonate with some Vermont voters who are concerned about some of the actions in Washington.

Yeah, I asked him that exact question at the press conference.

And I said, governor, aren't you concerned at all that the the fundamental takeaway that most voters will have from you just proposing to stay the course on this detention issue is that Vermont is essentially complicit with and collaborating with this, this administration that, that the members of the public and lawmakers around the state are increasingly raising alarm bells about being more and more authoritarian.

So, like I asked him whether he's worried that that is something that Vermont voters are going to start sort of taking away.

And he I don't remember his answer exactly.

But, I think it's very possible that he's out of step with a large chunk of the population of the state of Vermont right now on this issue and others.

And that's a problem you can solve like that.

Right?

Because the moment that Phil Scott does decide to stride to the microphone for some weekly press briefing and say, okay, we've we've crossed the Rubicon here and starts using the same sort of language that he used about Donald Trump in 2017.

In 2020, after the January 6th insurrection, I don't think that, there are going to be a whole lot of people that are saying, well, you took too long, and we don't we don't think you mean it.

So which is why I think, you know, at this press conference, he could have done himself a real favor by acknowledging this situation with the young man in Hartford who had just been picked up before he got into the business of the state.

Instead of waiting for you.

And I stayed to ask about it.

I mean, I understand the idea that you want to keep, you know, your head down a little bit and stay off the radar.

But, you know, there are a lot of conservatives out there in the last 48 hours who are really changing their tune.

I mean, David Brooks is no, left wing liberal columnist for The New York Times.

He's basically calling for a national uprising to try to stop all of this.

I mean, you know, this is also happening at the same time.

Donald Trump is going after Jerome Powell, the you know, that the head money guy in this country, you know, people are watching their 401 K's.

And you know, he's threatening to sue CBS over what's going on in 60 minutes.

I mean this is all in the tariffs.

And it's all been done.

And the totality of this very large number of issues all at the same time.

So get ahead of the curve out there though.

Is there a concern you think?

And I think you had written about this as well recently from the governor's standpoint, that if he speaks up, Vermont suddenly loses a huge chunk of funding.

We look at Maine, for instance.

They've already started pulling grants from Maine because Maine has refused to fall into lockstep over, the Trump administration's, you know, tack on trans women in sports.

And they said, fine, we're going to start pulling money from Maine.

Is the governor worried that basically Vermont, which is already facing somewhat of a budget issue, could be suddenly in a bigger hole?

And what would we get for it?

So, I mean, he was asked about that on Wednesday and he said, if Bernie Sanders road tour is not going to be the thing that, that that focuses the Trump administration scrutiny on Vermont.

Then, you know, what I say is not going to move the needle.

He thinks that, enough people are a high profile individuals from Vermont are already saying enough things loudly enough that that if that's going to come down on us, it's it's written.

And he does tend to deny that this is sort of all financially motivated, right?

He's he's not going to say, yeah, I'm keeping my head down and trying to stay out of the line of fire because I'm worried that the state has got billions of dollars in federal funds that are that are at risk.

I think privately he will probably say that.

And to his administration, to his cabinet and to others.

But the public facing explanation has always been more that he doesn't want to fanned the flames of the rhetoric and, and just he wants to separate the rhetoric from the reality.

He wants to take a more cautious, calm, thoughtful approach because stuff's come in so fast and furious from DC that if we have the outrage machine amped up to, you know, to ten, right at all times, and we always sort of respond that we're just going to fall into the trap.

I think he used the word trap in the, in the, in the press conference.

Like, we can't keep falling into this trap of Trump says something outrageous, and then everybody just stops what they're doing and freaks out and tries to figure out ways to thwart it.

So he's definitely trying to take a more steady, thoughtful approach, which I think a lot of, you know, residents of Vermont actually appreciate.

And I think it's probably got some.

And that's been the division among the Democrats in Congress.

You know, do you respond to every single thing that comes up, or do you pick your shots?

Right.

And it's it's really split the Democrats down in DC and, from us attorney general, of course, signing on to lawsuits to challenge some of these policies, which I believe, you know, the governor and others might contend, you know, that's where we start hitting back against some, you know, policies that, you know, maybe Vermont says we don't agree with this.

You know, she signed the two most recent ones.

We're targeting the erratic management, as she calls it, of Social Security Administration, and then also changes to procedures for conducting federal elections.

However, as we know, there's a long list of others to at least ten or so.

By my by my count, yeah.

It's double digits at this point.

I think, you know, you could put them under the broad theme of that.

The Trump administration is exceeding its authority, doing things that Congress should be doing.

You know, there's this proof of identity, of citizenship if you want to vote, you know, challenging the creation of, the Elon Musk Doge, budget cutting.

So, you know, there's there's a number of them.

And again, I think it comes back to that same strategy.

Sign on to every one of these.

And Charity, Clark is been very clear that you don't let any hockey puck get past you in the, in the net, that you fight everything and but is there any I know you had you talked to us recently?

Is there any concern from her office that, like, they're they're starting to stretch thin?

Well, they they she told me that they actually only have two full time people working on this, which sounded incredible to me.

They were they were going to seek money from the legislature to get a third person work at it.

But she argued that they were able to handle all the other cases that they need to handle and do this all at the same time.

Two things are multi-state lawsuits, to be clear.

Right.

Like I think, at least 19 other states have joined, all these lawsuits.

So it's not Vermont going it alone on the.

Yeah, I mean, a number of them basically Vermont's just signing on to which I think disappointing to charity clerk is that the other 19 are all Democratic attorney generals or attorneys general.

And, you know, she's hoping that that broadens out.

And you get a few Republicans the same way that Republicans in the national scene.

I mean, Senator Lisa murkowski of Alaska is on the front page of The New York Times today saying, you know, we're afraid.

I mean, it was, frankly, an incredible statement that a United States senator who's a Republican said that she's afraid about what the Trump administration is doing on all of those issues that, you know, from tariffs to to everything else, and it's afraid to say anything bad about it, lest the you stick your head out of the out of the hole.

Right, exactly.

We also wanted to talk briefly, because a new numbers came out this week about, the impact of the trade war, and its effect on tourism in Vermont.

New numbers show that for New Hampshire, Vermont and New York's so kind of our broad region here, 603,000 cars crossed through last March, March 2024.

Well, this March, that number dropped down to 472,000.

Peter, what our state tourism officials are doing to try to court those Canadian visitors back here?

They're telling our neighbors in Quebec how much we love them, how much we cherish them.

Please, know that we always want to have you here.

But but it's it's often falling on deaf ears.

The president of J.P. testified to lawmakers last week that, among Canadian residents who purchased season's passes last year, and early sales for next winter's passes are off by 80% right now.

And he said I called up the households who are not repurchasing them.

I asked them why, and he said to a person, they said, it's it's not the bad dollar.

It's not border crossing issues.

It's it's the 51st state rhetoric.

And they just don't feel like they can in good conscience support this country, economically with their tourism dollars.

And it's not.

Yeah.

With a big summer season coming.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's not just tourism businesses that are there freaking out about this.

I mean, there was a big hearing, I think the day before the hearing about tourism, there was a hearing where all these business owners and CEOs went and spoke to lawmakers and told horror stories about how the tariffs were going to impact their businesses.

And this was just hours before Trump actually paused the tariffs.

So people were sort of still, there's such a chaotic environment.

But there was a there was a CEO of us of a ski company that make skis, that was estimating he was going to have to add $250 to the price of skis because they the raw materials for the skis is made in the United States, and then it's shipped to Canada, and then the skis are made and the skis are brought back to the United States, and then sometimes they're resold to Canadians.

And so they were just having this compounding effect.

And there was another owner of a company in Richmond that makes water bottles, steel water bottles for bikers.

They're made in China, one of 125% tariff boards to snowboard.

So once you start going down the list of the impacts on the state's economy, whether tourism or businesses, it's just jaw dropping.

And I think there's real there's real fear.

Throughout the economy.

And we will, of course, have to see how that plays out as we, you know, hit closer to that 90 day mark for all the European tariffs it comes up in this summer.

Right?

I do want to end with something a little more lighthearted than all of this kind of heavy political discussion we've had here.

This one was an interesting one in the statehouse this week.

Lawmakers talking about whether Catamounts could make a comeback here in Vermont.

They've not been here for quite a while.

The last one was shot here in the late 1800s.

But this week in Montpelier, lawmakers considered a bill that would study reintroducing those big cats to Vermont.

Now, there are obviously a lot of questions.

How would that happen?

What impact would it have on our neighboring states?

You know, you can't tell the big cats to just stay in Vermont, right?

And also what it would mean to have an apex predator here.

Again, Catamounts, of course, known as mountain lions, cougars, pumas in other parts of the country where they're still established.

And it is unclear how far that bill will get this year, but it was one that caught our eye because, of course, you know, Catamounts have kind of a lasting legacy in Vermont, and we'll be curious to see how that plays out.

Hide your house Cat scans.

And that's it for us on Vermont this week.

Thanks so much to our panel.

We have Mark Johnson from Essex News podcast Vermont Public, Peter Hirschfeld and seven days is Kevin McCallum.

And of course, thank you all for watching from home.

Take care everyone.