Vermont’s airport is finally moving toward providing some legal support for the shocking number of detainees who are being abducted here. It happened after a long evening of impassioned pleas by dozens of citizens on August 6, a month after the story broke about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s use of commercial flights to transport more than 450 detainees between January and June this year.

Brave activists have been showing up in the wee hours of the morning to bear witness, speak to detainees when possible, and try to prevent people from being taken away against their will. In the absence of due process, the ICE actions amount to human trafficking. The activists once succeeded in stopping three people from being boarded onto a plane. The next time, ICE used a private side door, which was captured on video. Since the airport’s position had been to treat ICE like any other law enforcement agency in public areas, this attempt at secrecy resulted in packed halls at the Airport Commission meeting August 6.

Why do we even have detainees in the obscure state of Vermont? We are the second smallest in the union, where the Trump administration has generally turned a blind eye rather than stop the flow of milk through New England. But because the state has a contract to house detainees, ICE scoops them up fast elsewhere and dumps them as far as possible from their lawyers, families and communities—first in Vermont, then via the Burlington Airport to Louisiana and Texas or beyond. Less than half the people being shipped out of Vermont had access to a lawyer, according to Vermont Public Radio. Three widely covered cases—Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Kseniia Petrova—showed that, when ICE impulsively pounces on people and shackles them, judges set people free because they were denied due process.

The state has drawn some lines in cooperating with ICE, in addition to having the most outspoken and effective congressional delegation fighting the current madness. Gov. Phil Scott, one of the dying breed of open-minded Republicans, refused a request to delegate some of our National Guard to ICE to do paperwork. At the Airport Commission, Courtney O’Connor, a Montpelier attorney who has worked internationally, quoted a letter from the governor which stated, “Our administration will support efforts to ensure that those detained in our state are treated fairly and afforded full due process guaranteed under the law.”

He implied that it’s ridiculous for the airport to treat ICE like any other law enforcement agency, because they don’t behave like one.

The moment is ripe to look for every possible means for airports around the country to resist collaboration with ICE’s unconscionable practices. Airports are in a tough spot, because they are federally regulated and, to some extent, funded. But a recent court case brought by Vermont and 19 other states established that, at least for now, funding cannot be withheld from states which refuse to cooperate........

© Common Dreams