HARDWICK – A dark vehicle heading west on Wolcott Street a little after 7 a.m., Friday, had its drive interrupted when a white vehicle behind it turned on its siren and lights, pulled around it and brought it to a stop. Behind it two other law-enforcement vehicles stopped too.
courtesy photo
The vest of an armed officer in tactical gear who approached the car’s door said border patrol according to an observer who asked to remain anonymous.
The vehicles blocked the westbound lane of the bridge next to the Hardwick House of Pizza as other vehicles negotiated the narrowed street, observing the encounter.
Another anonymous observer said, “I saw a line of unmarked vehicles with Vermont plates and no lights or sirens and a South American man being walked in handcuffs by a white male. One truck had lights similar to first responders/firefighters around 7:15 a.m., Friday, Sept. 26.
Later, a white van was observed to arrive and soon left.
At roughly the same time and a little farther west, toward the entrance to the Tops market, a maroon Prius was pulled over by law enforcement vehicles on Wolcott Street, at its intersection with Charlevoix Street. Two women, who were recognized by a different observer as Hardwick residents, and two men left that vehicle with the law-enforcement officers. The maroon Prius was pulled into the abandoned convenience store near Tops for several hours and later collected by a tow truck.
Hardwick Police Chief Mike Henry confirmed that he had received a courtesy call that morning from the U.S. Border Patrol advising him they were conducting a targeted stop in Hardwick. Henry said the Hardwick Police Department was not involved in the incident and the border patrol did not provide any details.
Will Lambek of Migrant Justice said they learned nine individuals had been detained in the Hardwick area Friday, in a coordinated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action that involved five vehicles. When advised that one of the law enforcement officers had been observed to have been identified with Border Patrol insignia, he suggested it could have been a joint operation.
Later, Hillary Rich, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Senior Staff Attorney in Vermont, said the jurisdiction of both ICE and the border patrol (an arm of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)) overlap in the area up to 100 miles from the border. Both agencies are under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and are known to work together in the 100-mile area near the border, which covers most of Vermont.
Lambek said all nine of the people who had been detained worked for the same construction company, that he did not identify.
One of the people being detained had been released by Saturday afternoon, he said. Families of many of the others had been contacted. In an update Tuesday, Lambek said ICE has started to transfer them out of state, but they don’t yet know where.
Migrant Justice was working on the cases and Lambek was not able to release the names of those being detained, or the person who had been released.
Some weeks ago there had been a rumor that ICE had stopped a vehicle at the Jiffy Mart gas pumps in Hardwick, but that stop turned out to involve unmarked Vermont State Police vehicles and plainclothes officers.
A number of unverified rumors Friday caused confusion among area residents, along with other rumors verified to be false. This time, despite a rumor to the contrary, Hardwick Elementary School students were not kept inside the building during recess, according to several adults who work in that school building.
The workers are apparently not farm workers, which was another rumor that circulated.
The last time U.S. Border Patrol activity was documented by The Gazette, was in a December 12, 2012, report of an accident in which an undocumented worker was arrested after driving a truck into Hardwick’s Yummy Wok.
In that incident, Gazette Reporter Tommy Gardner wrote, “A Peruvian man crashed an Italian food delivery truck into the Chinese restaurant building on South Main St., Thursday, and was subsequently taken away by the U.S. Border Patrol. No one was injured, and a false fire alarm may have prompted the incident.”
In that incident, a fire department ladder truck responded to an alarm at Hardwick Elementary School at around 1 p.m., while a delivery truck was parked near Yummy Wok and the driver, Anthony Bilatto of Staten Island, N.Y., was making a delivery to Positive Pie. His co-worker, Denis A Ramirez Cespedes, with a Perth Amboy, N.J. address, “went to move the truck into a vacant parking spot, and instead smashed into the building owned by Yummy Wok owner Wei Gao.”
After the accident, Bilatto was overheard asking his colleague, Cespedes, if he had his “documentos de trabajoto” (work documents). Cespedes, a Peruvian, spoke no English, and later said the gas pedal stuck. No citations were issued by the Hardwick Police Officer who responded.
The officer remained at the scene, waiting in turn for the DMV, a wrecker service, and the border patrol, which is sometimes notified for translation help. The unnamed border patrol agent declined to say where he was taking Cespedes.
Robert Appel, then the outgoing director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, said law enforcement officers have other interpreters they can call, to keep border patrol out of routine traffic stops and the like. “Thursday’s incident, though, was not routine,” wrote Gardner.
Editor’s note: Minor edits with no material impact were made soon after the weekly PDF was published, explaining why this version is slightly different.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
