Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Hey. Thank you. Welcome back, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee, and it is Wednesday, January 14. And this is the beginning of our afternoon work and testimony. And we're going to spend some time this afternoon really looking through the eyes of DOC in terms of what's happening with the process of immigration practices, federal immigration ICE practice, in terms of holding ICE detainees in our correctional facilities. We looked at this a little bit last session in May. And we were concerned with the contract being renewed with border patrol as well as the federal marshals in connection with this. There was talk on many avenues. Do we do this? Do we not do this? And there was a consensus built around that, yes, we're holding more Vermont folks, folks from Vermont who are being picked up. And let's keep them in our Vermont facility instead of shipping them elsewhere. We're now eight months later, the contract was renewed through the federal marshals contract. And there's members of the committee that are concerned about the impact on POC, what is happening, and are the folks that we thought would be held back in May, Are they folks that are here in Vermont that get picked up? Are they being shipped out of state quickly? And are other folks, other states being shipped here to be housed in our facility? So that's a real narrow focus that we're doing today. I don't want to get into the whole big issue of ICE as a right or wrong policy. We all have feelings about that for sure. But I really want to limit it in terms of the impact on our DOC facilities. We have two folks scheduled, Jill Diaz Martin and Martin Diaz. And Falco Schilling. So I don't know who wants to go first.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah, sure. And for the record, Fogler Schilling, I'm the senior director of ACLU in Vermont. Our senior staff attorney, Hillary Rich, is gonna be presenting on behalf of these.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, and Hillary, why don't you come on up to the hot seat? We'll start with you. And then

[Speaker 2]: and then

[Speaker 0]: Hillary too, once you get settled, if you could just identify yourself for the record, it'd be great.

[Speaker 3]: Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Hillary Rich. I use sheher pronouns, I'm a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Vermont. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with the committee this afternoon. I'd like to just begin by addressing one of the issues that I was invited to speak to regarding the ACLU's position on holding immigrant detainees in Vermont and what do we do going forward. So as the chair just previewed, you know, when we're discussing immigrant detention in this state, the question around these DOC contracts are very frequently top of mind and understandably really controversial. And I think the justifications for why those contracts were extended are directly relevant to what we're seeing today and thinking through how they're being implemented. So I have given a lot of Know Your Rights presentations over the last year on immigrants' rights specifically. And at these events, an audience member will invariably ask me why the state is choosing to engage in these contracts and further really participate in the Trump administration's deportation agenda. It's a very fair question. I appreciate the committee's attention to it. And to be honest, this is an issue where my mind has changed in the past year. So before joining the ACLU of Vermont, I spent the first two years of I spent two years at the Texas border during part of the first Trump administration as an immigration attorney representing asylum seekers. My clients included mothers and children who were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Detention Center in Dilley, Texas, which is the largest immigration detention center in the country. And I witnessed firsthand during my time in Texas how there were these egregious human rights violations in these facilities inflicted upon families who came to The US seeking safety. And so when I came to Vermont four years ago, my immediate reaction was that my new home state absolutely should not be participating or complicit in any part of this deportation machine. But then I spoke with noncitizens in Vermont at risk of detention and advocates trying to represent them. And I learned that for so many, it was crucially important to keep detained Vermonters here among their families and communities in a state that has broadcast its commitment to ensuring that detainees well-being and legal needs are being met. And when people are transferred away from their support systems, we know it is that much harder for them to access justice in a system that is frankly already designed for them to fail. My understanding at present is that about one in seven detainees housed in Vermont have preexisting Vermont ties, and many others are from the New England region. I know that DOC is working up new ways to display some raw data, and that may show that detainee numbers have been relatively constant over the last several years. But I think that statistic maybe inadvertently is obfuscating the significant change in the type of population we are seeing in detention. So previously, as folks may know, most detainees were apprehended by border patrol at or near the border around the times of immediate crossing. But there has been a definite transition. And now people are increasingly detained as a result of interior enforcement, which means that many of them have longer ties to The US, to Vermont and the community, and potentially stronger defenses against removal and deportation. So, of course, the circumstances and ICE practices can quickly and dramatically change. So we need to keep monitoring the implementation of the contracts and examining the impact on immigrant communities and on DOC operations. But for all of these reasons, at this time, the ACLU of Vermont is not calling for an end to the ICE and CPP contracts with DOC. However, I do want to be clear, Vermont is falling far short of its obligation to meet the basic needs and fulfill the fundamental rights of non citizens in its custody. At a press conference this fall, Governor Scott stated that part of the justification for extending these contracts was that in Vermont, DOC facilities are safe and secure and we treat people well. According to many advocates for the detainees they represent, this description does not match reality. It's a federal law that non citizens have a right to counsel in their deportation proceedings. And we know statistically that access to a lawyer is one of the most important factors in determining whether someone can successfully challenge their deportation. And for those who came to The US to escape persecution and torture in their home countries, this means that access to a lawyer can quite literally be a matter of life and death. The DOC has been actively erecting barriers to prevent volunteer and low cost attorneys from providing legal representation to immigrant detainees in their facilities by restricting access to information and limiting attorneys' abilities to retain and speak with their clients. As a result, detainees are left to navigate a notoriously thorny area of the law with extremely high stakes without legal support. And when advocates are able to access DOC facilities, the reports are frankly chilling. I'm very glad that the committee today is going to be hearing from the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, because they can speak most powerfully to what they've witnessed firsthand. At present, my most direct knowledge as DOC intake provided in a language they can understand. People who haven't been able to contact their families because they haven't received instruction on using the phones, and people who've been suffering from serious and painful health problems while in custody because they don't know how to ask for basic medical care. So obviously, many of those harms that I just listed are directly traceable to DOC's failure to provide language access to detainees. And key pieces of information and even basic forms are not being provided too often in the appropriate language. The state has just not a moral obligation to ensure that people in its custody can exercise their fundamental rights. This is also a legal obligation, and this is true under federal detention standards, under state anti discrimination laws, and DOC's own policies that require it to the department to ensure that it's meeting the needs of non English speaking detainees in its custody. So to understand the full scope of the issue, nearly a month ago, the ACLU of Vermont actually submitted a public records request to DOC concerning policies around and practices around language access, interpreter use and translation services, and DTE's access to counsel. Unfortunately, the most recent communication from DOC I received yesterday on this was that they are still in the process of collecting responsive records nearly a month after the request was made. And it is disturbing to me that much of this information was not just readily available. But we know already that too many detainees are not receiving the access to legal counsel and medical care without appropriate language access. And in this case, denying a way to actually exercise those rights is the same as violating those rights. And we're not asking for detainees to receive benefits. We're really just asking for the baseline. These shortcomings concerning language access are deeply concerning to both the ACLU of Vermont and to the Human Rights Commission. In fact, the HRC, in cooperation with the ACLU, has opened a matter on DOC's treatment of detainees in DOC prisons, principally on the grounds that DOC's treatment of detainees appears to be violating Vermont law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of national origin. So my hope is that DOC will be willing to course correct and without further legal action, and that recourse to the courts won't prove necessary. But ultimately, what DOC will do next will show whether the state is committed to fulfilling its promise to protecting the rights of those in its custody, or whether extending the contracts will prove just a capitulation to the Trump administration. And unfortunately, it is very likely that this problem is only going to get worse with the detainee population increasing. So as this committee knows, the number of those in pretrial detention in DOC custody is at a historic high, which is straining the legal system capacity and adding to the growing court backlog. Additionally, there have been changes in federal immigration enforcement and strategies at the national level that will almost certainly continue to increase the number of detainees being held in Vermont and increase the urgency to ensure that their rights are being honored. And beyond improving conditions for those detained, there are several opportunities this session to further protect everyone who calls from not home. So for example, previously, as folks may know, ICE had issued certain guidance limiting immigration enforcement in sensitive locations like schools, places of worship, and courthouses. But in January 2025, ICE rescinded that guidance, making these previously protected spaces vulnerable to enforcement actions. So I'm really thrilled that a bill has been introduced to limit civil arrests to other locations like schools that the state has a sovereign interest in protecting. And similarly, ICE has been increasingly affecting arrests in ways that violate people's constitutional rights and using really underhanded tactics to streamline deportations without due process. And so I'm really excited that an access to counsel bill is being introduced this session that would ensure that detainees are provided with legal representation and a fair day in court. And so thank you all for your time and for your attention to this important issue. In Texas, it too often felt like those in power were content to ignore or even facilitate detention and deportations. And so I'm really grateful that Vermont is choosing a different path. And I appreciate the opportunity to share my perspective, the ACLU positions, and I welcome any questions from the committee.

[Speaker 0]: So thank you. One question I do have, and then I'll go to you. Okay. DOC has been due to some overcrowding issues within the regular population of folks coming in. Detainees, ICE detainees, immigration detainees were held at the women's facility in New York at St. August. And it's our understanding that quite recently with our population in general increasing, that DOC has denied immigration from housing some folks. That was through in testimony before our committee last week from DOC, that they have said no at times because those buildings can't accommodate them. So do you know what happens to those folks? Where'd they go?

[Speaker 3]: I don't know. And maybe other folks in the room do. My expectation is that they are then detained out of state in other facilities because there are other detention centers in New England. But I don't have firsthand knowledge of the ICE policies or CPP policies when Vermont does not have room.

[Speaker 0]: Do you have information on how long, what the length of stay is for those that are being held in our correctional facilities? Are they there just for a day or two and then shipped out? Or are they there for a week or a month? Do you have any of that information?

[Speaker 3]: I don't want to scoop that, but I know that they have all of those numbers from what they are seeing. My general understanding is, the I'm sorry. The Vermont Asylum Assistance Project has information on this. My my general understanding is that the number of days has increased from previous years, that typically it was a shorter stay, that the numbers have the length of stay has increased, but I don't know the specific amount.

[Speaker 1]: I

[Speaker 4]: was trying to take notes as fast as I could. Yeah, right. Yeah. You detailed several ways in which DOC is currently failing. The folks detained there, including the forms, access to legal representation, whether it's interpretation or translation language. I thought I heard it characterized as DOC actively hindering. I'm wondering if the ACLU just saying these things are happening and they're not allowed to happen or is this happening intentionally. Is that a characterization?

[Speaker 3]: So I'd say it is both a failure to fulfill their proactive obligations around providing interpretation, but also my understanding is active roadblocks to volunteer services that are attempting to come into the facilities. There are limitations that DOC is creating that is preventing them from actually volunteering services, limiting what information they have around populations, limiting their abilities to contact interpreters. As the organization that is boots on the ground actually providing these services that are not found since this project, Again, sorry that I keep kicking it out. The ones who actually I think are the people you'll want to hear from the most, they can give more specific examples than that. But to answer your question, it's false.

[Speaker 4]: So the lack of resources, but then also choosing not to allow more resources to help where there is a lag.

[Speaker 3]: Absolutely. I know I can respect that that fulfilling the fundamental rights of folks with limited English proficiency is going to require that certain additional steps be taken, which are already required by DOC policies. It's not that this is a new situation, but also the services that are being offered, detainees are being prevented by DOC from accessing them.

[Speaker 4]: Thanks.

[Speaker 1]: And this

[Speaker 0]: is state law that they're in violation with or federal law? All of

[Speaker 3]: the above. So there are federal detention conditions and standards that by contracting, you know, with a federal agency that DOC is obligated to be following. Those are the Oklahoma ICE website. There's also state anti discrimination laws that talk about how prisons are, for purposes of state law, a place of public accommodation that need to ensure that they are not discriminating on the basis of national origin, which, for example, language access serves essentially as a proxy for. But also, DOC has already its own policies around its obligations to provide intake in a language people could understand, to provide grievance forms or opportunities to request medical access in a way that people could understand. So sort of at every level, we are seeing more things.

[Speaker 0]: Gina and then Will. And then you were saying

[Speaker 5]: that as far as volunteers that want to get in there and do stuff, the VOC's thrown up some roadblocks with policy. Is it like new policy that they're implementing, or are they just trying to enforce older policy?

[Speaker 3]: So I think policy implies that maybe these practices are almost more formalized than they really are. My understanding is that day to day, just the practice of access has been changing. I don't believe it's an example of a written policy that describes exactly when or where pro bono attorneys are able to provide support. That said, DOC does have just a generalized policy about facilitating attorney access and the importance of ensuring that It's not

[Speaker 5]: that just like they've rolled up a bunch of new stuff recently. They're just like maybe enforcing something more about like progressively than they had

[Speaker 3]: in the Yes, my understanding it's more of these like day to day operational decisions that are creating impediments. It's not a specific new policy that I have seen written in the last year. But actually, part of the public records request that we made was about, like, please give us all of the policies that affect detainees just so we can get a better lay of the land of what you are required to do and what you are considering the rules to be. But again, that was something that I sort of assumed just kind of existed in a folder somewhere and they could hit send on, and we still haven't received.

[Speaker 0]: Will and then Troy and then Conor.

[Speaker 6]: So I have a few questions based on things that you brought up. The first one about telecommunications. There was a report or a news article that came out in the fall about certain, I believe, was it trainees or senates population folks, I don't remember which, that weren't able to access telecommunication services because of the payment system from the vendor? Do you know if any of your clientele that you've been working with have been affected by that issue?

[Speaker 3]: So as a disclaimer, I'm not representing people who are currently in detention. My understanding is that there are several issues, though, related to accessing telecommunication services, including you don't receive an instruction how to do that in a language you understand, even if the phone is theoretically available, if you don't know how to use it, that's kind of a useless offering. So others can speak. The folks who are actually providing representation and the direct services are able to answer that question, I expect.

[Speaker 6]: Okay. My second question about protected spaces. So I believe you're talking about S two zero nine that's at the bill right now. So I had introduced the bill last year, H five eleven. And the biggest thing that I ran into when talking about that bill, because what it was going to do was essentially figure out what spaces in a school were considered private, public, because there's apparently a gray area of the law, and I have not read through all, you mentioned courthouses for an example that were included in S-two zero nine, I'm curious, from that standpoint, do you think that there's any protected spaces that are currently in that field that would be impacted? When I say impacted, I guess what I mean is any that you Well, I guess what I mean by impact is how it would impact POC, because I realize it may be a judiciary question, but everything that stems from that committee tends to have a ripple effect over here. So I guess my question is about the protected spaces group. And two zero nine, could you just elaborate on that?

[Speaker 3]: Certainly. So I absolutely agree. Certainly what other committees do around how you can make civil arrests is, of course, going to affect the number and who is being detained in DOC custody. So I think it is a relevant question for this committee as well. So under current Vermont law, I believe back in 2022, Vermont has already protected courthouses from civil arrest and and the state house as well. Two zero what two zero nine proposes s two zero nine proposes is to extend that prohibition to other community spaces. So I think that the ACLU really strongly supports the premise of this bill. Some of those places include schools, I believe, like health care, shelters. And your question actually gets into a very thorny area of constitutional law that's is gonna be relevant for this committee and others. There are essentially two different sources in the law for how the state can protect these kind of spaces. One of them is that a really strong common law tradition of the prohibition against civil arrest in courthouses and the legislature. And that's essentially because these places can't operate if a person who is necessary to be there is going to be detained there on their way. For example, if I'm the prime witness in a case and I get arrested, the case can't go forward that day. On the other hand, what you're also referring to when you're talking about privacy are protections. And so that's the other source of law when we're thinking about how to limit civil arrest. And that's because we had, in the spaces where we have a reasonable expectation of privacy, like our homes, the private areas of businesses, law enforcement, whether it's state or federal, doesn't really have a right to be there without a judicial warrant or someone's consent. So I'm excited for two zero nine in that we it seems like the legislature is thinking really carefully about how we can take the logic around protections from courthouse arrest and some of the Fourth Amendment logic and pair that with the Tenth Amendment about how that the state retains a lot of these rights and police powers to say that certain areas like schools, for example, especially paired with like our fundamental right to education and the state's kind of affirmative obligation to protect that mean that the state has a sovereign interest actually in regulating if civil arrests are allowed to be happening in those spaces. So your question kind of is an intersection of many different areas of constitutional law. But essentially, that's kind of the underlying basis for why we think that we can expand some of these protections.

[Speaker 6]: May I ask one more question? I'm sorry for taking up time on this. One thing that I also was studying over the fall that was a concern was the number of people that are missing their immigration cases because of fear of apprehension. Do you have any statistics in Vermont about how many people have been apprehended because they were in compliance with their immigration status, but they fell out of compliance because of Oh, fear of maybe that's a joke. Okay, that might be a joke question.

[Speaker 3]: I think a joke question, I think, also, we'll just tease that it's think maybe So there is track data. The University of Syracuse has a great website about how to navigate and to sort by a lot of these issues. It's little tricky to tease apart, I think, in part because Vermont, folks may know, doesn't actually have an immigration court. It's Boston. And so I'm not sure if that data disaggregated by state specifically. But I think also importantly there, I can see two other relevant reasons this committee about people missing their hearings. And one is sometimes they're not missing their hearings, but are being actually arrested at the hearing. So people may come expecting to have the opportunity to actually argue in court why they have a justification to be in The US. And instead ICE puts them in detention. They're following the laws and they're still being penalized for it. And I think another challenge that we're seeing just within the facilities regarding access to counsel is that when folks are able to access their counsel, a lot of times these hearings happen, are virtual. And so if you aren't able to access your lawyer, oftentimes they're the ones who are facilitating your remote appearance. So there's also the risk that people being detained are going to miss their hearings because of these roadblocks.

[Speaker 6]: I guess the final pin I will add in there, and then I will stop talking, just to thank you for coming. And I can tell that you worked in South Texas because you're very well versed in the law, and I grew up in McAllen, so I appreciate your work down there.

[Speaker 3]: Lovely. I spent a lot of time in Laredo San Antonio.

[Speaker 0]: Troy and then Conor?

[Speaker 2]: Just quickly back to the record request. Can you articulate when you submitted that request? I'd

[Speaker 6]: like

[Speaker 2]: to know, from your perspective, how big was the scope of your request? I'm getting at how reasonable of a time to be giving DOC to respond. What's the most recent response you've gotten to that request? And then do you I don't know off the top

[Speaker 5]: of my head. I know I've

[Speaker 2]: seen it. But what is the legal requirement for disclosure as far as time? How long do people do they have to

[Speaker 3]: Certainly. I think so this request was submitted on December 18. I believe either that day or the day after DOC acknowledged the receipt and said they were working on it. Also, to be fair, this is during the holidays. So that part of the reason I did not nudge earlier was because everyone's taking time off around this. So trying to be understanding, but we're a couple weeks now past the holidays, and we're still waiting. In terms of the scope of request, I'd be happy to share it with the committee. Public records requests are public records. So if you all wanna see it, I can share it. Generally, I'm looking at my request right now. I think the first four items were just the contracts. Similar requests were around just the policies and guidance around implementation of the contracts, policies around access to legal counsel and legal information. And then also, if you look closer at the Agency of Human Service policies and DOC policies, you'll see a lot of the forms that they translate are required to be kept in a database. So we asked to see some of the forms that are already being translated. Also asked about requests for interpreters. Think invoices for interpreter services with a narrowed date, as well as the reports for the operational review and self assessment. ICE requires facilities that house their TTAs to do self assessments. So I think, I imagine that this information exists in several different folders, but none of this, to me at least, seems like it's a particularly beefier cumbersome request. I I think, like, I I imagine that 75% of this to me should already just be in some kind of policy manual or folder enumerating all of this. And the reason I'm asking this request is just to make sure we've got the full universe of what DOC is viewing as its guidance and operating procedures. Your question about Vermont Public Records request, typically, there's about a five day turnout expectation. And the statute allows for an extension for ten days for extenuating circumstances. In my experience, that ten day extension is always cited regardless of circumstances. In this case, I think they did request the ten days total. And typically, the ACLU doesn't really We're not looking to quibble over a couple of days at this point. We're a few weeks beyond the extension, though.

[Speaker 2]: So When did you last manage that?

[Speaker 3]: So I sent them an email, I believe on Monday. Yes. I think that was Monday evening actually requesting

[Speaker 0]: Previous Monday. Previous Monday. This week

[Speaker 3]: is Sorry. This week, Monday, the twelfth. Thank you. I just said, could you actually specifically, could you provide a response by this morning, the fourteenth? Because I they responded. They responded and said they were checking with, I believe, an ADA coordinator about certain requests. And I had knowing that there was a potential for this testimony, was hoping to be able to come here with the results of that request. So my understanding is they are are still working on it, but the the particular aspect that they say they're following up on goes to one item of the request. And, you know, we ask for for quite a bit more than that. Like, I I imagine they need to check with any kind of coordinator just to send me the policies. So yeah. They so they're I have not seen or been ignored, but I have not received a substantive response yet either. And, you know, honestly, when public records requests, you know, typically they cite ten days. You you often get, like, kind of a trickle after that either. They know, I I don't generally say, you know, at 12:01AM on the eleventh day, where are my records?

[Speaker 2]: And you've gotten nothing so far.

[Speaker 3]: They've acknowledged my emails.

[Speaker 1]: But you

[Speaker 2]: haven't gotten

[Speaker 3]: any responses yet.

[Speaker 7]: Thanks so much for the work you do. It's really important. Like that people like you are on the front lines there. We had a commissioner in last week and I expressed to him, think I'm becoming uncomfortable just with the existence of an ICE contract in Vermont. And I've heard the benefits of having a favorable judge. Or maybe being able to control some elements within the facilities themselves. I can't help but think, are we just perpetuating a system that's treating people like animals? Right? And we are complicit in that because Vermont is playing ball and we're working with them.

[Speaker 3]: Deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Vermont had any touchpoint of complicity in any kind of deportation agenda. What I see now, it is uncomfortable having to sort of shift to a view of pragmatism, though, that we know that these detentions are going to happen. We have seen Congress willing to devote billions more dollars to ICE enforcement and to building detention centers in other parts of the country. So we know regardless of whether Vermont keeps or cancels these ICE contracts, that ICE is going to continue its unlawful practice of violating people's constitutional rights to effectuate, aggress, and try to streamline deportations. What I see and a reason I'm so excited this committee of having this discussion is that almost by participation in these contracts, the state actually has an opportunity to disrupt that arrest to deportation pipeline and ensure that for the people who are being housed in our facilities, they are being provided with full access to counsel so they actually can pursue their legal claims against deportation. Because we know that people without lawyers are statistically way less likely to succeed. People in detention are essentially less likely to it feels like there is not a choice that feels good and clean, but I think that it is the better choice to figure out as a state operating within a federal system that is committed to dehumanizing folks, what can we do to counteract that? And in this moment, I think the best path the evolution. I haven't plunged everybody's hearts to figure out what's But I can say that the current ACLU position is that at this time we should not be ending the contracts.

[Speaker 5]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: So I have before me the renewed contract, as it went before Justice Silversight. The one big difference, they basically just added the ICE to the marshals contract. That was the big difference because we've always housed federal marshals folks. And the other big difference is the old contract with US Customs and Border Protection. There was a termination date. And there's no termination date on the new one. It could be terminated again with a hundred and twenty calendar day notice. So that's the big difference right there. So it's an ongoing contract. And it does specifically say, we will get your copies of this for the committee. Just pulled it out of my files. It does specifically say this is for the US Customs and Border Protection and also in the federal marshals as well. Vermont agrees to accept and provide for the security, custody, safekeeping, housing, substance, and care of federal detainees in accordance with all state and local laws, standards, regulations, policies and court orders applicable to the operation of the facility and consistent with federal law. And then in terms of the federal marshals contract, which now also includes ICE, in terms of medical services, is that the state would provide federal prisoners. Now are the ICE detainees considered federal prisoners?

[Speaker 3]: You know, I'm not sure in the contract how that term is being used, if it's a term of art or not. Whether the contract reiterates the importance of following state law, contracts aside, if obligations already exist in Vermont law.

[Speaker 0]: So it states this is in the federal marshals contract, which I think says. Provide federal prisoners with the same level and range of care inside the facility that's that provided to state and local prisoners. And the local government, being the state, is financially responsible for all medical care provided inside the facility to federal prisoners. So Kevin and Shawn, working with Trevor for the increase in well path, how much of that is attributed to holding federal marshal detainees as well as

[Speaker 1]: We'll ICE find out.

[Speaker 0]: Because this would include costs of all medical, dental, and mental health care. I

[Speaker 3]: read those contracts to essentially be saying that detainees who are placed in Vermont custody through immigration enforcement are essentially just entitled to the same protections that exist under Vermont law and policies. And my larger points were that those are the policies and law that is being violated currently.

[Speaker 0]: So and is ACLU aware that the department has refused admittance to detainees, ICE detainees due to the capacity of the facilities? Because the department retains the ability to refuse admits due to the capacity at the time of the intake. And our testimony that we received through justice oversight in the fall, and I believe even last week, the commissioner said that yes, he has refused because our capacity is limited. There's that limit.

[Speaker 3]: I have no personal knowledge of that, but I also have no reason to doubt that testimony.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions? Thank you.

[Speaker 7]: Thank you very much. You.

[Speaker 0]: Keep us posted if you do get a request from your public records request.

[Speaker 3]: I'd be happy to share those questions.

[Speaker 2]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, Jill. Come on up. Thank you. Sorry we had your name in reverse on the agenda.

[Speaker 8]: No worries. I've seen many iterations of my name at this point. Well, for beginning with apologies for the record, I'm Jill Martin Diaz. I use they, them, pronouns. I'm the executive director of Vermont Asylum Assistance Project. I apologize for being late.

[Speaker 0]: No. That's fine. We didn't even notice because it's hard to get everyone in.

[Speaker 8]: It's I wish I could share with you that this was an outlier experience for me. But unfortunately, because of the nature of our work at VAP and our lonely position as the state's lone direct legal defense provider in the state of Vermont that is working boots on the ground in facilities, doing facility based intake, We hold a lot at VAP. We've been really fortunate to have the community rally around us and support our pivoting away from federal funding that was revoked immediately in 2025. With ACLU client, Moses M. Dowie's assistance, we were able to fundraise quickly and right size long overdue infrastructure for Vermont's immigration defense landscape and recruit people quickly. Suddenly, we exploded from a team of four in May to a team of 10 by December. And the VAP staff who are in the facilities, including Leah Brenner, a staff attorney who's here observing today, They're carrying a lot, and it's their stories that I'm speaking from today. I've done several facility visits and and legal consultations and and court cases in this past year as well. But as the organization has gotten complex, I've taken a little bit of a step back into more of an advocacy role. And so I'm happy to get the conversation started. But if in the future, it would be helpful to hear directly from any other VAP staff attorneys, we could support them to make that happen. We're, of course, very wary of the fact that any time we spend away from direct representation is another Vermonter who's going unhelped. Just today, of this, the time that I wanted to come and spend with all of you today. We had to refuse representation to Haitian women who were detained in our community and seeking counsel urgently. And we had to say no. And that's pretty normal workday here at VAP. I come to Vermont Asylum Assistance Project with ten years of immigration defense experience. I was trained in New York and New Jersey immigration courts. I moved to Vermont and was running the law school immigration clinic. I have worked for a long time with community organizers at Migrant Justice and have a lot of experience representing constituents of all of yours and organizer members of migrant justice in their immigration matters. What we're seeing on the ground is the highest value information that we have to offer you as VAP. We do, of course, have organizational positions and opinions on different pieces of legislation that are being proposed or presented before the State House this session. But if you're looking for those boots on the ground, study stories of examples of what's going on, not only with regards to what ICE detainees' experiences are, but what some of the administrative barriers are to counsel even being able to connect with their detainee clients, those are the two topics that I'm most qualified to speak on today. We were really fortunate to have so much attention from this committee and others in the first half of the biennium. One of the things that was made clear to me from insiders was you can't ask for money.

[Speaker 0]: Heard?

[Speaker 8]: We need more lawyers, but there's no more money. Well, that's what I'm here to do now. And so, okay, fine. I understand we are operating in a really resource constrained environment with a lot of competing affordability crises impacting a lot of the miners. So if we can't have more counsel, then our strategy last legislative session was, well, how can we solve systems issues with systems solutions to make the very limited counsel that we do have more effective at their jobs, while we also were working with amazing people like Moses M. Daudi to try and generate new resources. And so we were able to do both, thankfully. And what we found after this year of learning, and by many metrics, success, but also many failures and missed opportunities, is that you can't create access to justice without both the council and the literal access, the logistical operational access. We could fund a million attorneys for VAP, but if we get turned away at the door of Northwest State or CRCF, as we were just this Friday, we can't help people. And as Attorney Rich pointed out, access to counsel in immigration removal proceedings is the difference between someone being able to assert, even be aware of their claims and defenses, assert them, and have a shot and held prevailing. And when we're bringing these cases, it's complex litigation that happens both in federal administrative courts. This means it's a court that sits underneath the Department of Justice. The judges are ultimately at the pleasure and direction of the executive. Many judges have been fired in the last several months. There's a lot of upheaval in the courts around due process, a lot of concern there. And increasingly, in the traditional courts, the federal judiciary, there are some bigger questions around access to justice and constitutional rights that immigration lawyers like me, who are okay learning by doing and being messy in public, can learn how to be judicial litigators. And we're bringing these complaints. And the District Of Vermont is one of the leading districts in the court in the nation, exercising checks on ICE overreach and helping to set precedent around the immutability of all of the fundamental rights and freedoms that attorney Rich summarized for you. Because rights without remedies are no rights at all. They're unfulfilled promises. It feels a little silly this day and age walking around with my motions, talking about my clients' rights. But what we do find is that when we are seeking the judiciary, and in some cases still, the immigration administrative system, to make a decision on whether rights were violated or behavior from ICE needs to change in order to respect our clients' rights and make them fully enjoyed, it works. We are winning. We're going into the District Of Vermont. They are issuing checks on ICE overreach. They are responding to our requests to keep people in Vermont when we ask them to. And we are giving asylum seekers, and in some cases, people who already have asylum, who already have green cards, who already have special immigrant visas based on past child abuse related experiences. We're giving them a fighting chance at actually being able to participate in their immigration hearings. So what does it look like? Our proposal last legislative session was twofold. One, better coordination from the state. We were asking the legislature to ask the executive to to herd all the cats and bring all the constituents together so that we could affirmatively identify what are these policies? What are the requirements? How are we going to be able to make our services and our resource constraints meet the state where it's at so that we can all be working toward a common purpose. So coordination was one piece. The second thing that we asked for, we were also a proponent of being able to maintain local access. I share attorney riches. There's a disconnect for an advocate like me, especially someone who's so intimately familiar with the conditions, the important conditions affecting ICE detainees to advocate. No, we need these beds. But we need these beds because there is absolutely no substitute to me getting in my car and driving up the road or in sometimes just across town in Burlington, flashing my attorney credential and being able to walk in and meet with my client face to face. That is the surefire way for me to be able to ask the client the question that I need to ask, for them to feel safe to share the information with me, for me to understand who their witnesses are, what the evidence is, what's going on for them in their lives. And we're finding that not only does our local access transform outcomes in the cases, we're also catching a lot of bad faith ICE overreach in terms of who they're detaining. We've encountered people who are not detainable under the law. And we are watching ICE prosecutors reinvent facts. I have to assume that there's good faith mistakes happening in this chaotic environment. I also I wonder if sometimes it is an intentional bad faith. But if I can't physically go in my car to go see the clients, then what I am is at the mercy of ICE, the rights violators, to pick up the phone when I call them, to talk to my out of state detained client, connect me with the correct interpreter who actually speaks the dialect that my client speaks, produce the client for the call at the time schedule, produce the client for the remote hearing. And I can't get in my car and go to Louisiana. And I can't go to my car and go to Texas. And why are people being congregated in these legal service deserts? By design, because there are not robust immigration legal service bars in these remote areas of Louisiana and Texas where we see a lot of detainees being clustered. So there were some questions presented. Who was being detained? Who were we actually seeing? At the start of this year, what we saw was an average bed stay was a couple of days. Vermont, in my time here, has never been used as a long stay facility. And in fact, it was written into the contract and policies. There was this seventy two hour window that was the practice, that this was a place where on the Marshals Service could allow ICE to hold someone pending relocation to another place. And that traffic continued to flow under the previous administrations when the majority of people being arrested for enforcement detained incidental removal proceedings were being detained based on prosecutorial discussion priorities that the administration published. So there was a subset of removable non citizens that the administration said, These are the folks we want you to focus on, ICE officers, CPP officers. Now what we see is there's no priority document. It's scattershot and it's opportunistic. We've met individuals who are being detained at Northwest who were picked up at the gas station on their way to their construction job at University of Vermont who were in status and had work authorization. But they were brown and non English speaking. And they were picked up at the gas station and then taken to Northwest. And that's where I encountered them. It seems very haphazard. When a person is in Vermont, we are actually causing some of the delayed stays. We have been going to the District Of Vermont, the federal court, and saying, please don't let ICE relocate this person to Louisiana or Texas for no discernible reason. I want to represent this person in their matter. And if you move them, I can't get through to them. Please keep them close so I can get in my car and drive to Northwest and represent them. So some of the belated timelines that you've been seeing now are actually what we've been seeking on behalf of our clients, because it is in their best legal interests. I understand now that the average stay is around thirty days. The Department of Corrections has been previewing this dashboard since May or June. So they are really the best custodians of the data. But just from what we can see and and number crunch from our system, people are staying for weeks. Over time, we're seeing less and less Vermonters, in part because today, two Haitian women got picked up and needed rep. And because of the intractability of our access to DOC facilities to serve the clients who are there, I said no to their representation. Now they're gonna get held in a facility, and I won't be there to ask the District of Vermont to please stop ICE from moving them out of state. And now they're gonna get moved. So we're seeing a lot of this deliberate separation from counsel. And it's a frustrating problem, because if I wasn't spending so much of our time, our attorney time, direct service time, trying to resolve administrative barriers with the Department of Corrections, we would have been able to devote all of that attorney term toward direct representation matters in the court. What were the administrative barriers? Yeah. Thank you for the question. Attorney Rich previewed a summary of the flavor. You can generally categorize the barriers into a few buckets. All of them amount to a barrier to accessing counsel. They have to do with medication, with language access, with attorney meeting space, and with the facility's ability to broker access to remote hearings. So I can just I have a whole series of case examples and not a ton of time. And so I'll give you kind of a flavor and then maybe invite the committee to ask specific questions. We do have some questions. Great. So we can start with those.

[Speaker 1]: Well, just specifically, you alluded to a situation recently with the last few days in Northwest where you denied access. Like, on on what grounds?

[Speaker 8]: No space. No meeting space. So

[Speaker 4]: has that been resolved subsequently?

[Speaker 8]: No. This has been an ongoing issue.

[Speaker 1]: But that specific issue from last week, has has have you now had access to this detained individual or individuals?

[Speaker 8]: No. So I can explain. Because of the volume of people who are being detained in Vermont, over the course of the year Total detainees. Total ICE detainees. I'm focused on ICE detainees. I have myopic focus. Thank you for clarifying. Based on the point in time head counts that we receive, there is anywhere from 10 to 30 men held at Northwest on any given day and anywhere from two to 20 women held at CRCF. Some of

[Speaker 0]: that is part of the federal marshals, though. Is that that's not all with ICE. Is that what you're saying? They're all with ICE? Because we do contract for some federal marshal beds. So I don't wanna Well,

[Speaker 8]: from my perspective as an immigration representative of you providing access to counsel for someone facing removal, that's not such a significant difference for us. Because when we arrive in the facilities to offer legal consultations and intake, anyone facing removal, whether or not they are in a purely civil legal proceeding or if they have been criminally charged with reentry or some other charge that we're seeing now in the criminal system and are now being held insolent to that, those are folks who need counsel, immigration counsel in particular.

[Speaker 0]: I'm just trying to meld those two things together because we've always contracted with federal marshals more so for crimes that were committed in Vermont that there are federal crimes. And what has been happening over the few years is it's a civil violation to come across the border, and those folks are being picked up and being housed at our facilities. That's not a criminal violation. It's a civil violation, if I'm correct.

[Speaker 8]: There is also a criminal liability. To that crossing of

[Speaker 0]: the border. That is a trigger.

[Speaker 8]: It's not of crossing the border. It's of reentering. So there are select criminal statutes in the federal code that the Trump administration has been using to pretermit asylum seekers' access to asylum seeking. Because right now, the law on detention, the policy on detention, is that someone who has been charged under those criminal provisions, once they get to their immigration proceedings, they're not eligible for release on bond. And functionally, they're required to be detained for as long as the administration would like. That functionally precludes people from being able to seek asylum. We're pretty in the weeds. But what I would suggest is, just from our perspective, we are removal defense attorneys. We see our charge as making sure that a person who is facing permanent banishment from this soil that their body is on has access to a full and fair hearing, period, as is consistent with the fundamental rights and freedoms written into our state constitution and federally. And so we will consult sometimes that people might be under martial custody technically, but they're a non citizen awaiting deportation whose rights are under the purview of a legal service provider like me. And why were

[Speaker 0]: you blocked from DOC? Was it just space or was it also language barriers? Well, getting to the space question. There

[Speaker 8]: are infinity more potential clients than there are lawyers. And so one of the tried and true best practices progressing access to justice here in Vermont and nationwide is pro bono volunteerism. Vermont Asylum Assistance Project was founded with an initial charge, a limited charge, of utilizing my clinical legal teaching chops to motivate private practice lawyers in Vermont to volunteer their time with us. Because with my one hour of attorney time, if I can sit in the hallway and supervise four junior advocates, I could serve four clients with my one hour instead of just the one. That is space intensive. And so we reached out to the Department of Corrections in the beginning of last legislative session around January, and we documented all of our communications back and forth with them to proactively offer some capacity on our end to resolve logistics, some funding and resourcing to promote language access. We wanted to come to them to make them aware of the problem and lead with some proposed solutions that we independently fundraised for. VAP has not received a dollar of appropriations. And in fact, legal services appropriations in the state of Vermont has never been allocated toward immigration legal representation. And we wanted to be really solutions focused because we felt it was important that we were working together with the state agencies toward a common purpose of protecting the federal and constitutional rights of detainees. One of the things is that we need meeting space. We need to know when there's gonna be rooms available, confidential attorney client rooms, so that the volunteers we've gone out and recruited and trained can show up and know that they have a place to meet with the detainee. Because when we get turned away at the door, the volunteers have a bad experience. They don't think that this is a good use of their of their limited volunteer time, and they move on to other things.

[Speaker 1]: So is there an opportunity to schedule it? So you could be like, we're gonna be here every Tuesday at 01:30?

[Speaker 8]: That was absolutely what we did. And yet, we have continuously found at one of the facilities, and sometimes both, that we will arrive for our scheduled time and be turned away at the door because we've been double booked. This past Friday was the first time we sent very seasoned non staff volunteer attorneys to go without us because we had another commitment. We're just a little more annoying, I think. And so they were turned away and they ended up leaving. But in the past, it's often been quite a lot of overhead leading up to, during, and then after these facilities visits, just to be able to sit down with someone and have that one on one confidential screening. And that same day, if we do have a successful visit, we could be filing motions for review from the federal judiciary that night when it goes well. But instead, what we found is we've had to devote an extraordinary amount of attorney time toward this administrative locker head.

[Speaker 1]: So were they turned away because they weren't admitted to the bar?

[Speaker 8]: No. No. We have experienced that too. So we've been turned away due to lack of physical meeting space. We have had our volunteers turned away, our legal assistant volunteers. I'm an adjunct professor in the Department of Social Work at University of Vermont. We train highly skilled social work students to come and provide paralegal support. It's a great program for the students. It's great for the state of Vermont because it's free of charge. And we've had the students turned away because they're not attorneys. We fundraise for and contracted our own language access services on demand that are available through an application or through video teleconference. We were paying for that from our own budget. Then we were informed that all of our devices were banned. Then we were trying to schedule time ahead with

[Speaker 0]: the Weren't they by DOC? Yes. Because your devices aren't secure enough for DOC's security?

[Speaker 8]: We don't know, is the short answer. So our experience of I was not surprised to hear Attorney Rich describe that they haven't yet received a substantive response on what you would think would be daily operating procedures, because that's been our experience, too. Mid clinic sometimes let's say we have attorneys on the ground. Mid clinic, we would be informed, you all need to leave, or you all need to close your laptop, or all your student assistants need to go. And then we would ask and ask, can we see the policy? We find a solution? Can we

[Speaker 0]: have a

[Speaker 8]: meeting? Sometimes we have not heard a response. Sometimes we will get kicked to the public advocate's office. Or eventually, we started speaking to their general counsel at the attorney general's office. But we really lacked clarity as well of, well, what's the game that we're playing in so we can meet the expectations?

[Speaker 0]: Who at the facility is Who's at the door denying you access? Is it the superintendent? Is it a correctional officer? Is it a administrative person in the head office in that facility? Do you know who is at that door for DOC?

[Speaker 8]: Yes. So when one goes to a facility, there are front of house officers who were charged with implementing security policies and doing checks. Sometimes we have faced resistance at that level. I won't go into that right now. But, yes, we've faced resistance at that level. Sometimes we've asked for the manager and we've faced resistance at the superintendent level or at the community programming level. My overall summary of the very exhaustive documented administrative advocacy we've attempted to do to resolve this in good faith and collegially with our partners is this is a top down policy that comes from the top. It feels vulnerable to be sharing this with you all in public in this way because there are really good faith actors working throughout the hierarchy, throughout the org chart of the Department of Corrections, who feel really hamstrung by directives that are coming down top down. And some of them have tried to find within the ambit of their authority workarounds ways to meet us in the middle. And so I certainly We are really grateful. We've been able to do a lot of amazing legal work this year, and it's a credit to people on staff who have really wanted to collaborate. But no matter the level or stature authority of the individual in the hierarchy that we've spoken to, my understanding is that there is a top down policy and then to limit access and a practice of undermining any new practice solutions that we have affirmatively brought to the table with our own funding.

[Speaker 0]: Troy and then Conor.

[Speaker 2]: I have a theoretical question here. I typically don't like to ask those, because I don't know if this is even possible. But if we found a way to create a temporary space, something in like a FEMA trailer or something like that in close proximity to these institutions, would you be using that nonstop, like five days a week? And if we just selected a spot or found some way to implement a spot, you feel you'd be using that regularly?

[Speaker 8]: Yes. Absolutely. And this there is a full time job. There is a full time law firm practice amount of of removal defense needs. Like, to be clear, the removal defense needs that they the lack of infrastructure in our state does predate 2025. It predates the Trump administration. What we see now is a very from an advocate like me, welcome increased attention and awareness around the issues. Because the numbers are so boom and bust, when suddenly there's a mass arrest or a mass transfer into Vermont, it's really stifling to try and create legal services. The challenge is, right now, we already observe DOC to be unable or unwilling to produce respondents for their immigration court hearings, Even regardless of

[Speaker 2]: when you're in the building?

[Speaker 8]: Well, it's funny you should ask. We happened to be in the building providing working we as a fixer for representative Ballant who was doing a congressional oversight visit. We had let the congressional delegation know about all of the challenges we've been facing. Representative Ballant went to conduct a visit. It just so happens that one of our detained clients had a hearing that day. Our legal team, I'm the supervising attorney, we're back at our office ready for the virtual hearing, and the client's not there. The client's not there. We just so happened to be able to contact our colleague who was accompanying congresswoman ballot and say, have you seen client today? Because the judge is threatening to order him removed in absentia for failing to appear for his hearing right now. And it turns out that they had no plans to present him. There's no video hearing equipment. They hadn't didn't have a plan to transport him to another place where there is a video hearing capacity. And my staff member opened her personal laptop and beamed in the court to connect this one person representation. And the poignancy of that is that she was watching this unfold, and she's a new paralegal, not empowered in that dynamic. Right? Looking around the facility, noticing how many other ICE detainees were also around. And they do these hearings and block schedules. How many people actually did miss their hearings that day? So I'm worried. I mean, I wanna be solutions focused, but I wanna Logistically, my concern is, if it's an off-site location, is there bandwidth to produce people? Will people really be produced?

[Speaker 2]: Gotcha.

[Speaker 0]: Where when there is a nice detainee, they come through booking when they're first there. Where do they end up after that? Do you know? Like, in the facility?

[Speaker 8]: So it's different facility to facility. But generally speaking, I understand that the federal beds tend to be congregated. So there's different units. If you have four different units at CRCF, let's say, there won't be ICE detainees sprinkled throughout. They often will be congregated. And as the language access needs have gotten complicated based on who's coming through, even that doesn't provide the detainees with any information or solace because we will sometimes meet people who are the only speaker of their language on their floor. And DOC hasn't provided interpretation to even explain to them where they are or why they're there. And we will come with our interpretation, what we used to come with our interpretation. And they would be like, you're the first person I've been able to communicate with. And so they're around. If you're visiting the facilities, they're along with the rest of the population. And this is common in other states, like my experience in New York and New Jersey. You might not know, unless you're racial profiling perhaps, that someone is in ICE custody or criminal custody. But what's interesting is the language access barriers and the way that that exacerbates medical issues and counsel issues, it creates so many issues for the subpopulation that we have heard from people who are there in corrections custody under criminal convictions, like, that they feel badly for the ICE detainees that they have it so bad. We've had detainees express remorse to us for having voted for President Trump because of how poorly they're watching their other unit makes being treated or not being engaged with at all because the language access is too onerous.

[Speaker 0]: Just wondering what that does to our staff at the facility. Conor?

[Speaker 7]: So the denial of access is really concerning. Do wanna say, working on this committee, we know there's space constraints, understanding, of course. I guess the question is, do you attribute your limited capacity to the population you serve? Or would another attorney trying to meet with another detainee run into the same issues? Or is it not apples to apples because of the nature of the cases you're doing and the hearings are moving more rapid fire? I'm just trying to get a sense, is there any quality here in your access compared to another attorney with another population?

[Speaker 8]: In terms of, with regards to other people who are in DOC custody, absolutely. It's completely different. So the Vermont statute authorizes the Defender General's Office to provide immigration representation. And I understand that there are no appropriated positions that provide dedicated removal defense, which is why the state looked for people like me and Leah. But I know that there are some good actors. These aren't institutional solutions. These are holes in the bucket. But I know there are some defenders who bring immigration passion and or experience and awareness. And so they do get tapped in addition to their roles and responsibilities to provide additional support. But basically, when a public defender in the defender general system has someone who has had their liberty deprived, the whole system is structured around facilitating their confidential conversations and that person's access to their hearings, no matter what. And when it comes to someone who's in the immigration, the civil immigration detention system, the removal proceeding system, Instead, we are kind of trying to figure out where the holes in the buckets are, doing our own external fundraising, coming up with endless different plugs for the holes in the bucket, and continuously being turned away. It's like day and night. But it's to your point, detainees, when the state deprives a person of their liberty, your rights are the same. Your right to review, to protection from harmful treatment from punishment, your right to a full and fair hearing, to counsel, those rights are the same, whether you're being prosecuted civilly or criminally. So it is just night and day, the experiences.

[Speaker 7]: Thank you.

[Speaker 8]: And to your question about the staff, I really do want to just underline. Because honestly, we have had some incredible staff on the front lines who I don't want to get in trouble. I'm worried about people facing retaliation for having done what they could to facilitate our access. We have had tremendous numbers of legal victories this year because of cooperation from frontline staff who are risking their job stability for us. And no doubt, they are trauma exposed service providers just like we are. And that's why we've been so focused on a systems level solution. We need to be united in saving the rule of law. We don't wanna be fighting against our fellow service providers. And I really empathize with how everyone is being thrown into this system because it is incredibly complex, the practice of language accessibility and cultural humility, the feelings of helplessness in a fundamentally unjust legal system. That's a lot to hold in a resource constrained environment. So I do validate that. But I think it's worthwhile because not only are individual families being reunified, Vermont community members, fashions of our community are coming back home. They're walking free and coming back home and returning to their families and their communities. But we are also preserving the rule of law. We are creating a history, a written history in the District Of Vermont and a few other key districts around the country, building on the incredible success of ACLU's pioneering work with Moses M. Daui and Rumeza Oster, we're holding the line. And I think that we're all going to benefit systemically, as well as a state and a community and individuals and families, if we continue to ensure that there is counsel and that detained people can access counsel when they need it most. How many different languages

[Speaker 0]: are you aware of? Is it five? Is it 10? Is it 50? This is going

[Speaker 8]: to be anecdotal. So I just written this down the other day. I'll riff. The languages that I know we have encountered include Spanish, French, Mandarin, Farsi, Dari, Punjabi, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Portuguese. It's gonna be, I mean, at least 10.

[Speaker 0]: At least 10. So where do we find How do we do the interpretation? Is it through an app? It's what. Finding a person.

[Speaker 8]: Now the department has let us have our meeting time, to your point. But they have asked that we all share their one landline to call our own interpreter service that we pay for and that we take turns. So we're back to one attorney to one client ratio with that model. But it used to be that we would just have on demand interpretation. Based on the success of the Legal Defense Fund, we've been able to just pay costs. The estimated cost is about $1,000 a month for two to four facilities visits a month. That's it. Imagine if it would go up if it went up. But that's where we started. We also have successfully trained and brought with us in person interpreter volunteers from the community. But we have had some challenges with volunteer retention.

[Speaker 1]: So that impediment isn't universal, though, is it? I mean, there must be some of these detainees who speak English well enough that they can he's gonna converse with them.

[Speaker 8]: Yes. Some some do. That's true. Some folks do speak English. I don't know. I'm a Spanish speaker. So when I go in, I'm I don't even try. I'm like, I don't know. But I think the way that the legal system is structured is such you know, the the immigration removal system guarantees people access to their proceedings in their first best language.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. When did they stop

[Speaker 5]: allowing you to have the electronic

[Speaker 8]: on demand, and what was the reasoning, if any of them? Because that just seems ludicrous. So the timeline that the staff and I prepared Did you ask for the reasoning? The reasoning? Yeah. I mean, reasoning. About a month, two months in, so we decided to ask permission, not forgiveness, which was my learning. July 25 is when we had really nailed down, come to agreement on the operational structure after having initiated conversations in March. Lots of meetings, lots of emails, lots of coordination. We got there in July. And then by September, our devices were banned. We see that legal screenings after that dropped from being able to serve one hundred percent of detainees that we encountered on any legal visit day twenty five percent of detainees on any legal visit day. And when was that? September as well? Yeah. So September is when our devices got banned and then we had to rely on sharing the one landline and a pack of volunteers. And that's when our success rate in terms of being able to retain a client and screen them, we could only see twenty five percent of the detainees. Reasoning? Was there any reason

[Speaker 0]: for this?

[Speaker 8]: So apparently, subsequent to our project, even though we spend so much time in good faith trying to negotiate an operations agreement, we then found out from the attorney general's office, Gen Council, that there were some DOC policies in place that are not available online that could be provided to us by email. And so the department let us know then in the game that there are restrictions for all attorneys being able to bring in their devices. And so we said, that's fine. What's the language access plan then? Because Title VI of the Civil Rights Act is not limit your language access rights and obligations don't end with the security concerns alone of my device. Can you provide devices for us to use our own services? Or can we think of some other solutions? But that's really when we found after the summer, I know that there was quite a transition happening at the department. And we really found that we were not really being provided with a lot of reasoning about why policies were changing in our practice.

[Speaker 5]: Is your device format app, whatever you were using. I mean, is that something that's pretty readily accessible and fairly cheap?

[Speaker 8]: Yeah. And it's it's used the reason we used help Genie is the company Because it's the the that you need.

[Speaker 5]: DOC from what I can see, for sitting on this committee, is stuff that work that's allowed outside. It's the exact same as the stuff inside. The inside stuff has to go with the inside stuff, and the outside stuff has to go with the outside stuff. So it would appear that we should just be able to replicate the same thing, even if it has to be DOC and you can't bring it in yourself.

[Speaker 0]: That should

[Speaker 8]: be great. We use them because they're what's used by all of the leading immigration legal service providers in the country. All of our one of our key funding and service partners, immigrant the justice It's got absolutely nothing to have to. That's what they use. So we're like, great. Let's let's use it because we want time is of the essence. We're too resource constrained. Like, we were just like, let's let's pay market rate, and let's get this done.

[Speaker 0]: Shawn?

[Speaker 1]: No. It got answered. Sorry.

[Speaker 0]: Brian?

[Speaker 4]: I don't know. It's minor. But it seems like in some cases, when your access or the tools that you can use have been limited, DOC has some logistical reason for it. Earlier, you had talked about, I think it was sending folks down south as a deliberate separation from council. I believe that myself. But there any explanation offered? No room up here. We have to. Or was any explanation offered?

[Speaker 8]: So what's really difficult is, yes, the government has obligations to explain to people what's happened to them. Like in the criminal context, we're all familiar with Miranda rights. Theoretically, those also exist in the immigration context. But because immigration arrests can happen in ways, in more violent and secretive and deliberately misrepresentative ways, and there's often a language barrier, it's the person in shackles and a jumpsuit's word against the other about what transpired. So we don't know a lot. We have heard anecdotally from clients about ways that they have been physically burglized, denied medication, and not explained where they are or why they're here. So I will be the first person to tell them you're in Vermont. They're like, what's Vermont? And we we organize with our counterparts in other states, and we watch the patterns where increasingly we are seeing the department detain people not in their state.

[Speaker 0]: So they'll put them in

[Speaker 8]: a van. Instead of taking them to corrections processing, we'll bring them to a federal office in a corporate park, which is not legal, and then move them out of state. So they might never come through Vermont, the Vermont correct state system. And we have requests for legal help. And we've done representation for family members of Vermonters who contact us and are saying, my loved one just turned up in Louisiana. Anyhow.

[Speaker 4]: So the circumvention of facilities, I thought at first you were going to say that you've observed this in other states. But you're saying you've observed observed this here too.

[Speaker 8]: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then what then what we'll do is we'll go to the facilities expecting to encounter a lot of folks like I described, the construction worker on his way to his job site at UBM. And instead, I'll encounter a woman who was arrested after entering a diversion plea in her state court for a shoplifting offense. And she was from another New England state, but, like, they brought her here. And so a lot of what we do is organize with our counterparts. But when we have capacity, like, full throttle, the ACLU Vermont tried and true litigation strategy, if we can be there and we can be immediately asking for judicial oversight, we can stop the transfer churn. We intervene, but we found that our ethical obligations have prevented us from saying yes to as many cases as we've been asked to.

[Speaker 5]: Follow-up there, just really quick. Do you understand that the Williston facility is being used for that?

[Speaker 8]: I have no knowledge of the Williston facility being used for that. I do, however, know that the St. Albans offices and Swanton offices have been used for that. So people being held in what is essentially an administrative office setting, not in a facility approved for the custody and care of a detained person.

[Speaker 1]: And just humor me.

[Speaker 0]: We do that all the time. You know I will. Supply.

[Speaker 5]: And this is also

[Speaker 1]: for attorney Rich because but I don't know who who who's better at it. Can you just give

[Speaker 8]: us some

[Speaker 1]: give us some really basic understanding of constitutional law that is being tread upon by ICE right now? Other than not not things that they're doing legally. Maybe they there there's some things. But what's being done illegally against the Vermont constitution and the United States constitution? If you can give me just broad over reach.

[Speaker 8]: Yeah, certainly. This is gonna frustrate you all, because that's definitely Hillary's bailiwick. And just to be clear, the question is what is ICE doing in Vermont and Vermonters, not limited to the scope of what are they doing through DOC or with DOC?

[Speaker 0]: Think right now, I think the better focus would be through DOC, with DOC.

[Speaker 8]: So there are several federal and state theories of liability. Issues that we can look through the law and we can say, we see all of these violations happening and we have documented evidence of violations transpiring, ways in which these people could seek remedy. And it has to do, the most essential is around their due process rights. They are not being given access to process. There is quite a bit of process owed an immigrant detainee of any type. Someone who has a serious and robust criminal conviction record and is facing permanent banishment and separation, maybe deportation to a country where they will face certain death. Everyone has a right to process. And that is being violated across the system, including now with Vermont acquiescence and complicity. We also see a violation of civil rights law with respect to Title VI language access obligations. Federal fund recipients have an obligation to create language accessible places of service and accommodation. That's being violated here. We also have observed many instances of individuals who are being denied medical care are being subjected to differential treatment. A person who is being detained pursuant to the immigration system is receiving a differential respect of their food needs, their religious needs, their medicine needs than their other counterparts. And we also see, as Hillary mentioned, anti discrimination law violations at the federal and the state level. It's really robust. It's funny because when I think My bread and butter is direct representation for individuals who are defending themselves or seeking humanitarian protections under immigration law. But when someone like me who's I'm not every day a plaintiff's lawyer. I'm not filing lawsuits. That's really what the ACLU does. But it is really staggering to look at how many different federal and state statutes are implicated by the facts that we're seeing on the ground.

[Speaker 1]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: And you might add to that, that there are policies within DOC that DOC may not be

[Speaker 8]: following. Correct, correct. And right, riders to the contract. So there's contractual agreements that are not being met. But like you said at the top of my testimony, there are no rights without remedies. You actually need lawyers to go bring the matter and controversy before a fact finder to actually make those rights a lived reality. Otherwise, they're just a list of promises. And we would love at Vermont Asylum Assistance Project to focus our very precious and limited capacity on immigration legal defense, not on enforcing the rights and responsibilities from our state agency colleagues.

[Speaker 4]: You gave an example of being denied medical care. I guess I'm wondering I think there's 100 different ways how that happens. And I guess I'm thinking also, does it happen with the knowledge of BOC?

[Speaker 6]: Does it happen with

[Speaker 4]: the knowledge of medical providers?

[Speaker 8]: I'll give you some specific examples of people who we've met. And some of these are a matter of public records. If the committee would like, I would be happy to collate for you a list of for people who have already consented to us speaking about them in public with the media, that then you can get your hands on some really concrete examples. So I'd be happy to share that with Tate afterward. But we have met people who, because DOC, their custodians, never called an interpreter service to communicate with them, did not understand what the person's medical needs were. And sometimes it's not just the medicine that you take. They also need to have certain diets, eating at certain frequencies, a certain level of hydration, access to a certain amount of sleep. And so we've seen the language access barrier transpire into this medical access compounded by the legal access barrier. Because if it takes us a while to get in, and by some grace, ICE hasn't relocated them to some other facility, we get in and find out finally, for three weeks, I've been denied my access to this the food that I need because I'm healing from stomach surgery, is a case, Vilma. I'll send it to you. And I would have told you about it if you had showed

[Speaker 0]: up for three weeks earlier.

[Speaker 8]: So we see a lot of that.

[Speaker 0]: We've got a lot of information this afternoon. We are on the floor at 03:00, so we do have to finish this. But I think we'll spend time as a committee discussing this. And I think it's only fair that we have DOC in. And I would recommend to DOC that they view this testimony. It's on YouTube, they can. And there's a lot of things to digest here And and process I don't say this in a negative way. I just know that in the world corrections, things are more difficult. I get that. I also know there's security issues that we, as laypeople, sometimes don't even think about. So I'm not making excuses. I know that they have a lot of trouble with their space. We struggle with that in this committee with all the facilities not having enough space. And we know that their WiFi Internet IT system is not what we experience in our world. So I don't know if some of that contributes to some of this. I'm not saying it does, but I just know in our world of working with corrections, those are issues that keep coming up. But to deny folks their legal access is a real concern and to deny folks medical care regardless of their status, because we're all humans.

[Speaker 8]: Thank you, chair. And we certainly we empathize with the resource constrained environments. We're poverty lawyers. Everything is connected. But we're nothing if not scrappy and flexible. So

[Speaker 3]: So we're really

[Speaker 8]: open to kind of We want to be negotiating in good faith and collaborating with the administration. And I had told myself that this session, was going to try and conserve my attorney time, my colleague's attorney time, more for direct casework because I don't want to be saying no to Haitian mothers who are getting picked up. But I felt so strongly that this needed escalation. And so I was just really grateful for this committee's time and attention, opportunity to share with you what we've been seeing. And we're always happy to return and provide additional specific information as would be helpful.

[Speaker 5]: Thank you so much for your help. You for being scrappy and creative and courageous.

[Speaker 0]: That's all we need.

[Speaker 2]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. So for the committee, we're still on YouTube. We do have a caucus of the whole after the floor. I don't know how long that would take, but we do have scheduled testimony after with our legal counsel Hillary to go over the pretrial supervision now real quick. So after we're done, Mr. Floor, please come back. Let's see what time.