#No MáS POLIMIGRA

Stop Police Collaboration with Deportation Agents!

Everyone should live free from fear, bias, and discrimination

Loopholes in VT’s “Fair and Impartial Policing” policy bring our immigrant community under attack

We WON!

On March 9th, Burlington's city council voted 11-1 to approve our Fair and Impartial Policing Policy, without amendment. Thank you so much to the many community members and organizations who lent their support to this campaign in Burlington. Biggest thanks of all goes to the many immigrant workers who have been struggling in this fight for years to make fair and impartial policing a reality, both Burlington and statewide.

Want to pass a similar measure in your city or town in Vermont? We want to help! Please reach out to no-mas-polimigra-btv@googlegroups.com to set up a meeting with us. We would be happy to share strategies and lessons learned.

On November 22nd, Chiri, a farmworker, was traveling from the farm to Burlington with friends when his car was pulled over by Deputy Jeffry Turner. Chiri was a passenger, not the driver, but Deputy Turner demanded to see his ID and radioed Border Patrol, holding the car on the side of the interstate until agents arrived and detained Chiri. These actions violate Deputy Turner’s own department’s Fair and Impartial Policing Policy (FIPP), which states that “members of the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department shall not initiate or prolong stops for the purpose of enforcing civil immigration matters, such as suspicion of undocumented status, nor shall they prolong stops for the purpose of allowing federal immigration authorities to conduct such investigation.” We need to demand accountability of law enforcement and pass a stronger FIPP in Burlington to protect immigrants’ rights!

Why is strengthening Burlington’s Fair and Impartial Policing Policy (FIPP) important?

  • Human rights: Everyone should be treated equally under the law. The process of getting a traffic ticket or a DUI should be the same for every person, regardless of outward appearances or immigration status.
  • Public safety: the current system causes immigrant and New American communities to not trust law enforcement and not contact or work with them, which creates a less safe community for everyone
  • Resource utilization: Spending public resources on local police officers helping to deport our undocumented neighbors means that those resources are not being spent addressing actual problems that affect the daily lives of people in our community

How was Vermont’s FIPP developed?

  • 2014: Farm workers and Migrant Justice leaders and activists won passage of Act 193, mandating all police departments in the state implement Fair and Impartial Policing policies (FIPP) and gave a July 1st, 2016 deadline for departments to adopt the model state policy.
  • 2016: FIPP protected all Vermonters from biased policing based on personal characteristics (like race, gender, or sexual orientation) or immigration status and greatly limited local police from engaging in federal immigration enforcement.
  • 2017: Due to many departments not fully implementing the policy, a law compelling all departments to implement the policy in full was passed. Police officials took advantage of this to reopen discussions on the model policy, in an attempt to water it down. On December 12th, 2017, a group of law enforcement officials voted to weaken Vermont's FIPP, effectively opening the door for increased discrimination and police collaboration with deportation agents.

What are the loopholes in Burlington’s current FIPP?

  • It allows for the reporting of immigration status of victims and witnesses of crimes to deportation agents
  • It evades prohibitions on asking about immigration status by allowing officers to rely on the pretext that the person is suspected of having recently crossed the border
  • It allows the sharing of confidential information with immigration agents, so long as it’s justified on grounds of “public safety” or “law enforcement needs”
  • It grants deportation agents access to individuals in police custody, effectively turning local police stations into temporary holding cells for ICE and Border Patrol

What can we do to strengthen Burlington’s FIPP?

  • The #NoMásPolimigra campaign aims to bring awareness to the FIPP loopholes and to work with city government officials and citizens to close them. “Polimigra” is a combination of the Spanish words for police (policía) and immigration agents (migra). It is used to describe when police collaborate with immigration officials.
  • Vermont’s statewide policy is a floor, not a ceiling. Other cities, including Winooski, are building on the statewide policy by adopting stronger language that helps protect their residents; its FIPP closed these loopholes in 2018.
  • Our citizen-led coalition, Community Voices for Immigrant Rights, is working with Migrant Justice to pass a city-wide resolution, in which City Council would pass a police department directive to close the loopholes.
  • WE NEED YOU to pressure on your city councilor to support the new resolution by doing the following: