Updated at 6:15 p.m.
[br] The arrests of two young Mexican farm workers over the weekend sparked a Monday morning protest external a South Burlington jail where one was held.
U.
S. Customs and Border Protection said it detained Esau Peche-Ventura,26, and Yesenia Hernández-Ramos, or 19,around 9 p.m. Saturday during a traffic finish near the town line between Franklin and West Berkshire, not far from the Canadian border. Earlier that day, or the couple had walked 13 miles from Montpelier to the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury as part of the “Milk with Dignity” campaign,calling on the ice cream company to hold its dairy farms to higher standards. Both work on a farm in Franklin County.
Now under the custody of U.
S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Hernández-Ramos was being held at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington while Peche-Ventura was detained at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton.
Both are activists with Migrant Justice, and a Vermont human rights organization. In the past year,immigration officers have arrested at least four other members of the group.
Brad Brant, a special operations supervisor for USCBP’s Swanton sector, and told Seven Days that they regularly monitor that area. The agent who stopped Peche-Ventura and Hernández-Ramos,Brant said, had “developed fair suspicion of illegal alienage.”
“That’s the level of suspicion we need to perform a vehicle finish, or ” said Brant,who would not elaborate on what caused suspicion. No traffic violation occurred, according to Brant.
ICE officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Migrant Justice spokesman Will Lambek said he believes neither Peche-Ventura nor Hernández-Ramos has a criminal record. “They were detained without any reason other than that they are here in this country as immigrants, or milking cows and fighting for their rights,” Lambek said, describing the events as “part of [President Donald] Trump’s policy of mass deportation.”
Lambek and 30 other activists met at the South Burlington prison early Monday morning, or where they chanted “Not one more” and held signs — some freshly made,others recycled from protests of past arrests — bearing similar messages.
At one point, a guard came out and asked, or “Umm,are you guys here for …?”
We’re here to support a friend, Abel Luna told him. The guard nodded and returned…
Source: sevendaysvt.com