Building a Firewall for Freedom

Under the Trump administration’s cruel mass deportation campaign, the federal government is trying to intimidate our communities by defying democratic norms, denying our constitutional rights, and deploying masked and unaccountable agents into our neighborhoods.

In response, there are several policy provisions that Vermont policymakers should prioritize.

• Safeguard Immigrants’ Access to Essential Services: Prevent federal agents from making warrantless immigration arrests in private spaces in schools and healthcare facilities and expand Vermont’s ban on civil arrests at court houses to include other government buildings.

• Provide Access to Counsel for ICE Detainees: Provide access to free legal representation to people held in state facilities for alleged civil immigration violations.

• Require Proper Identification of Law Enforcement Officers: Ensure law enforcement officers can be held accountable if they violate a person’s civil rights by preventing them from concealing their identities.

• Improve Detention Conditions: Improve access to language and medical services, allow access to free communications, and restrict exploitive prices at commissary within Vermont’s prisons.

• Smarter Stops: Address over-policing and racial disparities in traffic stops by prohibiting stops for minor equipment violations and consent-based searches without probable cause.

Unfortunately, Governor Scott and some state lawmakers are proposing that we pull from President Trump’s playbook. Instead of another round of failed tough-on-crime approaches, state policymakers should learn from the past and invest in solutions that address the root causes of the complex challenges facing our communities.

• Right to Rest: Close the legal loophole created by Grants Pass v. Johnson and affirm that the government cannot punish people experiencing homelessness for engaging in life-sustaining behavior on public property when they have nowhere else to go. The state forcibly unsheltered thousands of our neighbors—it’s cruel to ticket or jail people kept out of our state’s underfunded support systems who are simply trying to live their lives.

• Fund Emergency Shelter: Due to the Scott administration’s push to decimate the General Assistance Emergency Housing system, the needs of our communities far outstrip the program’s capacity—at the same time, the program is not being used to its full capacity because of needless administrative barriers. At the very least, we must continue to fund this essential program and remove these unnecessary barriers so more people can access the support they need.

• Invest in Harm Reduction Strategies: We still need to transform our approach to substance use disorder so that our laws recognize this is a public health crisis—not a criminal one. Lawmakers must expand the state’s harm reduction infrastructure, including easily accessible treatment options, drug-checking services, sterile safe injection devices and disposal boxes, transportation to treatment services, mobile treatment services, and easy access to naloxone. These are far more effective and less costly options than incarceration.

Changes to federal Medicare and Medicaid rules are expected to come out in the coming months, and we are working with medical providers, lawmakers, and direct service providers to ensure trans people retain access to this life-saving medical care no matter what happens in Washington.

For now, our priority remains ensuring that patients and providers have the resources they need to continue to access gender-affirming care in the face of changing federal regulations.

Vermont needs to build stronger protections for our personal data, especially for those being targeted by the Trump administration: immigrants, queer and trans people, and people seeking reproductive health care services.

To that end, we will be calling on lawmakers to minimize the information that private entities and the government can collect, as well as what data can be sold or shared, to better protect Vermonters’ privacy and constitutional rights.

The current economic system works for those at the very top, but too many people in our communities are struggling. When those who can most afford it pay their fair share, we can build a Vermont that works for everyone.

We will continue urging lawmakers to increase taxes on the wealthiest Vermont residents to raise state revenue and ensure support for essential state government services in the face of unprecedented cuts to federal funds.