So a Vermont superintendent is left reeling this week after border agents at a Texas port of entry detained him for several hours and searched his devices.

I suddenly realized that the fact that I'm a U.S. citizen and that I have a U.S. passport doesn't mean anything.

I asked whether I was being detained, and she said, you're not being detained.

And I said, then can I go?

And she said, no, you're may not go.

That's the definition of a detention.

Plus, thousands of Vermonters will see federal food benefits eliminated or reduced.

And a free food distribution program faces pushback in Burlington.

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.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks so much for joining us for Vermont this week.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, July 25th and with us on the panel today, we have Pete Hirschfield from Vermont Public Sasha Goldstein from seven days and Laura Ullman from WCAX.

And thank you all so much for being here.

We're going to start with a story that has outraged those who have heard about it.

You saw a little bit at the top there.

And the reason people are outraged is because this is a United States citizen who was detained recently.

Let's hear what Wilmer Terraria had to say about what happened to him was threatened with being referred to to the FBI.

The FBI was mentioned multiple times.

They also threatened to, stain my record so I would never get a job again.

They also, threatened with, an extended detention if I didn't give them the passwords to the student information or to my district files.

I just don't feel safe here.

I feel like I'm being told over and over that this is not my country, that it doesn't matter that I'm a U.S. citizen.

I do not belong here.

Okay, so again, this is a U.S. citizen.

This is a Winooski School District superintendent who has worked in the Winooski schools for two years now.

And we heard what he was saying there.

Ostensibly he has protections under the Fourth Amendment, the Bill of rights.

But Sasha Goldstein, what happened to, well, recovery here in a nutshell?

Yeah.

He was coming back from a trip, from, Nicaragua, which is where he's from.

And he became a, naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018.

And he's he's flying back, and he had a layover in Houston and was pulled aside and detained for several hours.

And, you know, it sounds like a very demeaning experience that he, that he underwent.

They the the agents demanded access to his school laptop, his cell phone.

So it's just, a pretty stark example of the things we're seeing, I think, at the borders, where even a being a U.S. citizen isn't something to protect you from this sort of intrusive, detainment, questioning.

This is a guy who's, married to a guy who's born in the US.

And that was something else that was questioned by these agents.

He's, you know, he's married to a man.

And and that was something that, Wilmer felt, like, was marked.

And it was just it just sounds like a very scary, experience.

Did they ever say to him why he was being pulled over here, taken away and detained?

No.

And I think that is part of the, the outrage here is there was no reason, you know, it just seems like this guy, we want to pull him aside and give him a hard time and see, see what happens.

And it's like a fishing expedition in a way, with no, plan whatsoever.

It's just been fascinating to see how much national traction this story is getting.

You know, a lot of Vermont media outlets picked it up.

But but it's it's national and even international now.

And I think it's for the reason that you mentioned Sasha, because this is a U.S. citizen.

And I think people, begin to ask the question, oh, what might my experience be like if I leave the country and try to come back?

And, you know, these border zones are fascinating liminal spaces from a legal perspective, groups like the ACLU have argued and continue to argue that Fourth Amendment protections exist even when you are trying to cross back into the United States.

The federal government maintains that its national security mandate, is absolute and that it has full discretion to engage in these sorts of searches and seizures.

That would not be illegal if you were not in a border space.

So, it it prompts a lot of longstanding and unsubtle legal questions, that are, that are going to become even more salient, in the coming years.

And there's been a lot of reporting about, the, the Border Patrol having this 100 mile range where they can come from, from the border, which is most of Vermont.

Or more in all of Vermont.

Not quite, but, essentially it gives them power to do exactly what you're saying.

And we've seen that a recent case where, to members of Migrant Justice were pulled over, this was closer to the border, but it was almost, a very similar thing in that, it wasn't clear why the reason given seemed, you know, muddied at best.

So we're seeing these cases that raise a lot of questions for, as you said, people who live here, people of unsettled citizenship status and people who are citizens themselves.

And I want to ask about another incident in just a moment here.

But Laura Allman, you actually spoke with Wilmer Echevarria, after this happened.

I want to get a sense from you what that conversation was like.

How did he feel talking to you about it?

And did you get the sense that he was really terrified by what happened?

I think he was worried.

I also think he's really confident, competent man.

And he said that he was concerned about the inappropriateness and legality of the way that he was, detained.

But something I wanted to touch on was that I did ask Customs and Border Patrol why he was detained, and they did not give a specific reason, but they did say that it's rare to search electronic media, and this is not something that I asked them about.

So they volunteered this information and said they only would search media if they were investigating a serious crime like terrorism, smuggling, human trafficking and visa fraud.

And I did bring that up to Chavarria and he was surprised.

That is really interesting.

Did he ever did he get he didn't give the passwords to them to look into the computer.

Did he refused to do that?

No, because their sensitive student data on there, including the legality of some of the students who are in the what new ski school district.

Sasha Goldson, you were saying that there's sort of this wide berth that's been given to to federal immigration authorities here.

There was an incident with a woman, traveling, I believe she has a green card.

She she lives in Burlington.

She was also detained.

What happened with her?

Yeah.

This is a woman who's originally from, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

And she was in Montreal for a wedding.

She lives in Burlington.

And on her way back, she was detained along with several members of her family.

And, she is a green card holder.

She's here illegally.

And she was detained for 11 days.

Her family members didn't know where she was.

And eventually they tracked her down.

She was being kept at Vermont's only, prison for for women.

And, she was there until she had a court hearing at which a judge allowed her out.

Until further proceedings.

But it appears she's held on this very minor visa technicality.

Where there's, an issue about whether she was single or married at the time that she she signed and swore to this visa affidavit.

So it just seems like there's this undue scrutiny of anyone who is not.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I was going to say not something.

But all of these cases are, cases that of people with different, legal statuses.

So I don't know that there's anyone that could say I'm a U.S. citizen and I'm, you know, safe to travel?

Who knows?

Oh, yeah.

Go ahead.

Unofficial shift away from, federal immigration authorities, Biden era posture, which was essentially if if somebody whose sole violation is a civil immigration issue, and they don't have any underlying criminal history, then this is not going to be a priority for Ice, for Customs and Border Protection.

And the default is to release people back into the community.

And what you're seeing with all these cases right now is a shift from that posture to, one in which the feds first inclination seems to be, in many cases, to proceed with arrest and detention.

I think the really interesting point that you're making about this story getting national traction, even international attention, has to do with the increased incidents that are happening here.

If it becomes something that's normal or if it feels normal, then you're not going to have the pushback, about asking these legal questions like the ACLU is asking.

That seems to be the most dangerous part of this.

If it keeps on happening, eventually people are going to start thinking it's normal.

Well, the federal government would push back on your saying that there's been an increase in these sorts of searches and detentions at border crossings.

They say no such phenomenon is occurring right now.

I looked for some hard data.

I reached out to some groups ahead of the show to see if there are some empirical statistical evidence I wasn't able to come across any.

You talked to civil liberties advocates, and they say based on anecdotal evidence, there's no question in their minds that we're seeing an increase in this sort of behavior.

The feds maintain that's not the case.

If you look at project 2025, for example, though, this is playing into that handbook.

And in other words, there was a blueprint for this that was we all saw sort of coming.

It's again anecdotal evidence.

I would love to dig into the figures on this.

Yeah.

And the president's rhetoric.

Yeah.

Has has laid bare, the fact that he's very interested in and seeing this sort of increased scrutiny at the, at the United States border, you don't want to stick with you, for this next story here because you've been, speaking with Senator Bernie Sanders.

He recently I was in Burlington, which is sort of a rare event for him these days.

He gave a press conference there, and he was talking about what, President Trump had called his big, beautiful bill.

This is the federal budget bill that, just passed, here's what Bernie Sanders had to say about the bill.

17 million people lose their health care.

Kids are not going to have a decent diet because we cut back on nutrition.

Young people are not going to be able to go to college.

We don't worry about that.

Let's focus on mass deportations.

And there, of course, is Senator Sanders talking about what we were just talking about, which is this seemingly increasing incidence of arresting people, or detaining them, for ostensible reasons that are not very clear.

He's concentrating on the budget here.

Something you found out is that Vermonters are going to lose federal food benefits.

Pete, what's the extent of this?

So, there are about 65,000 Vermonters who get federal food benefits from the supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, $155 million a year.

Coming to Vermont from that program, by far the biggest food security program in the state.

And the congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next ten years, as a result of this big, beautiful bill, we're going to see about a 20% reduction overall in food benefits over the next ten years.

So food security advocates in Vermont, as you can imagine, are really worried about what this is going to mean on the ground in Vermont.

There are going to be situations where unhoused people, veterans, older Vermonters, by virtue of new work requirements, may no longer be eligible for food benefits at all.

The Department for Children and Families tells me they calculated that there are about 2000 people who are at risk of losing benefits as a result of those new requirements.

But across the board, you're going to see at minimum reductions in benefit sizes due to things like getting rid of this inflation adjusted index that they had used to sort of maintain the buying power of food benefit.

So, you know, state government, Phil Scott, lawmakers are going to have a lot of dilemmas that they're going to have to resolve in terms of to what extent they want to use state funding to backfill some of this lost federal revenue.

And they're going to be a lot of advocates saying that food security is going to be one place that Vermont is going to be have to be spending more money, in order to make sure that these federal cuts don't result in something terrible.

And on that topic, is this connected at all to the fact that the Vermont food Bank is facing some shortfalls and they're talking about layoffs now?

It's it's not, certainly not directly.

This is, problem that food banks across the country are dealing with coming out of the Covid pandemic.

We saw state and federal governments invest enormous sums of money, in nonprofit food organizations to address the spike in food insecurity that we saw during that time.

A lot of those programs are winding down.

And, and the, increase in staffing that those organizations implemented, with that new money, they're having to right size now because the revenues aren't keeping pace.

So, yeah, about 10% of the, the workforce at Vermont Food Bank, John Sayles, the president says this is not going to affect access to or availability of food.

But we'll see.

Okay.

Thank you for the update on that, Pete.

Sasha Goldstein, I want to talk about another food related story.

And this is about a free food distribution program, for Burlington that's facing some pushback here.

Give us the general, parameters of this.

Yeah.

This is a group, called food, not cops, that's been operating in downtown Burlington since 2020 during the pandemic.

And, this group, saw a need, for fresh, free food for people who, live or in Burlington.

And, they started this.

They call it a picnic where they hand out free, free meals.

And, they started doing it in a parking garage and were operating there for many years.

That has rankled, some city officials and some business owners.

You know, the people who are attending these meals are generally, homeless folks, people with, drug addiction issues, mental health issues.

So, you know, the business owners have said these are people who are, you know, shoplifting and then they're going to get a free meal and that's upset them.

As well as using a parking garage that's used by shoppers who who park there.

So this caused, some, some strife in City Hall in Burlington and, the Council Democrats actually wanted it to be moved.

They said, you know, we're for free, free meals and the idea behind it, but not in that parking garage.

And they set a deadline of July 14th, just recently.

And, about two weeks before that deadline, the, the group moved, their, their distribution to City Hall Park.

And, so that's a very public out in the open place.

But there's still some debate about whether that is the best place for it to, to actually happen.

Everyone says they agree the need, obviously the need for free food and assistance is is huge.

We're seeing that constantly.

And so, the question I guess is, is where it's going to end up.

It's not an official program though, so it's a little weird, like, you know, who's going to make the decision about where it goes.

How do you make a decision on something?

It's not really official.

It's that's exactly right.

This group doesn't have a permit.

They haven't really they kind of operate on anarchist principles.

So they don't really like to be told what to do.

So, what happened is the city wanted to tell them to move.

They didn't.

They kind of dug in their heels after that.

And, have sort of insisted on doing it their own way.

It's supposed to be this anti-capitalist protest as well.

Interestingly enough, there have been some First Amendment attorneys who have seen, the potential here for an argument that this is a First Amendment right to have this sort of gathering.

So, I don't know if the city wants to escalate it to that point where there's a lawsuit or, you know, force happening where they're saying, get out of here.

But, it's been a very interesting debate.

You know, there haven't been a lot, you know, there's been some pushback to the, the park being used as the distribution site.

But I think the question is whether it will really prompt that, that blowback.

I think having it out in the open is, is, preferable, in a way, because the, the parking garage is, you know, it's covered and things can happen there that, are not ideal.

So Councilor Rebecca McKnight, at the last city Council meeting, brought up that, the Chinen County Sheriff's Office said that there's been a 50% decrease in heroin use, and crack usage overdoses, public urination, defecation and sexual solicitation.

Since they've left the parking garage, will that come to City Hall Park?

I don't know, I have heard rumors of things like that happening there.

And I've seen videos of things like that happening there.

But will it be worse because of food?

Not cops or food not bombs?

We'll have to see.

So they're saying that that they have numbers.

Again, hard to check those.

I'm sure to say there's been a reduction in the in these bad behaviors, at least in the parking garage since it moved.

Yeah.

So that's what the that's what McKnight says.

The sheriff's office told her we have a public records request in to see if those numbers are accurate, but we haven't heard back yet.

Okay, great.

Laura.

Laurel, let me stick with you here because you had a fascinating, feature recently about restorative justice.

You spoke with a gentleman named Travis Merritt.

He's been through the program.

Before we get into his story, what is restorative justice in a nutshell?

What is it aiming to do?

Restorative justice takes somebody who would maybe do better outside of the traditional criminal justice system, and gives them a chance to improve their behavior by completing a contract with their community.

That's also formed with, somebody from the restorative justice team, with two community volunteers and a victim's advocate.

And so it also would expunge your criminal record, and it would take you away from a punishment like jail time or probation.

Now, is this the kind of thing where, you have to qualify for the who gets who?

How is it decided who gets to access this program?

In my story, we're focusing specifically on a program called Tamarack, which is for people who have substance use disorder or mental health issues.

But there's, other types of restorative justice programs that you can go to.

It's the state's attorney who recommends people to go, okay, the guy you spoke with, Travis Merritt.

You know, it was an incredible story.

He had a cocaine problem.

Apparently, he had ran from the cops, escaped through the woods during winter, knows, you know, shoes or socks on his feet.

And he woke up the next morning in the woods very cold and said, I've got to change my life.

Has the restorative justice program worked for him to this point?

To this point, yes.

He is a repeat offender and we might get into this, but repeat offenders are more likely to complete the program and then re-offend.

But Travis is actually sober for the first time in 30 years.

He's, had problems with substance and substances since he was 14, and he credits restorative justice with saving his life.

What about the overall success of a program like this, though?

Do we have any sense of whether it works?

Right.

So there's two sets of data that we can look at.

First is the outcome of the people who complete the program versus don't complete the program.

A lot of people, unfortunately, and I believe the number is 90% of people who are fenders or who people who commit crimes again and again who complete the program will re-offend.

That's the recidivism rate for them.

And then for people who are first time offenders, if they complete the program, they're less than 1% likely to repeat a to offend again.

Right.

Interesting.

You know, one of the things I find fascinating about the program is that it involves people who have been victims of crimes.

They get a say in this.

Is that something that's unique about the program?

It's really unique.

I don't think that in the traditional justice system, victims get to, talk much about, what they want to see from the victim or from the offender, and receive, you know, justice in their way.

That's really up to the courts here.

The victim has a voice, and, the offender can give the victim exactly what they want.

If that means financial reparations or if that means an apology letter, the victim can actually decide or at least help decide.

I mean, certainly, you know, prisons are overcrowded.

The court systems are overcrowded.

If this did work, it would be one way to alleviate some of that, I would imagine.

So I did bring that up to State's Attorney Doug Disabato, and he was actually appalled that I asked that question why he he thinks that that's a terrible reason to send someone to restorative justice to alleviate the court system.

He believes we should only be doing it if it's the right thing to do.

And if it's fair, he doesn't want anybody think that thinking that this is a way to save money or, get people out of jail.

This is supposed to work for the community.

It's fascinating.

And before we move on, just one more question.

Is this something restorative justice that's available pretty widely throughout Vermont, or is it just concentrated in the more populous areas like Chittenden County?

There's restorative justice, centers all over Vermont, top to bottom, in rural places and cities.

Some of the we invest $3 million every year into this program is huge.

All right.

I want to move on to another story that we've become all too familiar with, especially during the summer months.

As I came in today to do this show, it was raining really hard.

Rain used to be just rain.

Now, every time it rains, we start thinking about the worst and that's flooding now.

Now, Pete, you've been covering, obviously the changes that are happening with FEMA.

We heard some news today that the head of search and rescue, FEMA at the federal level, is resigning, apparently because of chaos within the system.

What is going on with FEMA and what can we expect when the next big weather event hits?

So I think everybody in the emergency preparedness space is doing their best to understand what sorts of changes might be coming.

It has been difficult for them, however, to sift through the shifting rhetoric from President Donald Trump, from Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem.

The one thing everybody seems to be pretty confident about is that the feds want states to take on more responsibility for both short term and long term disaster recovery.

What's not clear is exactly what that's going to look like.

I've talked with emergency management directors in Vermont, both the state and the town level, who say they really want to begin preparing for this eventuality when they're going to be the ones who are responsible for going door to door, for example, to canvass flood survivors to figure out what they need, what's broken, what sort of help can we give you?

Because the feds have said we're not going to be doing that anymore.

At least at the scale that they were before.

But it's very unclear to all of them exactly what what sort of playbook they're going to have to learn.

It's made it difficult for them to prepare for future disasters.

And the big question, what is FEMA going to look like the next time Vermont has a major disaster?

It is a question that that we don't have the answer to right now.

It's not true.

Well, and we had some reporting earlier this month about the cancellation of what's known as brick grants.

And those are actually to, create flood mitigation programs.

And those seem like pretty important, piece of this puzzle.

Rather, you know, they save money, they, are ineffective.

They save lives.

They're just an effective way to mediate.

The issues of flooding.

And, Attorney general charity Clark has actually joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration to get some of those funds back, because towns like bury, Montpelier, towns that could really use it, who have specific projects, you know, ways to increase floodplain, around, areas that that are prone to flooding.

They're losing that money, and the state doesn't have anything to pick up the slack.

And, oh, by the way, another FEMA grant program that supplies about 75% of this annual budget for Vermont emergency management, that was supposed to go live in early spring, is still on hold, and they have no idea when or even if that money is going to materialize.

So that could create another budget hole for Vermont that it's going to have to figure out in relatively short order.

We'll have to wait and see what happens, which is a bit of a scary thought.

Before we head out, I want to mention a couple of things.

Vermont journalist and historian Steve Terry has died.

Terry was formerly a reporter and editor at the Rutland Herald, as well as a reporter at the Times Argus.

Throughout his career, he witnessed and reported on local historic Vermont events as well as national news, and he did so up close.

He died Sunday after a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

He was 82 years old.

I want to thank our panel today so much for being here.

Pete Hirschfeld, Vermont public, Sasha Goldstein from seven days, and Laura Ullmann from Wcax.

I really appreciate you all being here.

And before we head out, one more thing.

Our colleague, our friend Robert Resnick, also, passed away, just last week.

He was 72 years old.

Folks will know him as the host of the All the Traditions program, folk and world music show that aired on Vermont Public Radio and Vermont Public for 30 years and more.

To be honest, I didn't know Robert as well as some people at our music department did.

But I will tell you this and the interactions I did have with him, he was always delightful, always passionate to talk about music, always left every conversation I ever had with Robert Resnick with a real smile on my face.

I can only imagine that those who knew him best felt that joy reflected ten tenfold times.

And he will be missed.

Our memories and our, condolences to those who knew Robert Resnick.