South Burlington Police Chief William Breault, center, speaks before a joint meeting of the House and Senate judiciary committees to discuss the role of local law enforcement in an ICE raid in South Burlington last week at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Thursday, March 19. With Breault are Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison, left, and Col. Matthew Birmingham, director of the Vermont State Police. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger MONTPELIER — Local and state police officials were asked Thursday to explain the violent clashes between Vermont law enforcement agents and protesters during a federal immigration operation last week in South Burlington.  At a Statehouse hearing packed with about 100 onlookers, lawmakers pressed the law enforcement officials to answer for their officers’ presence and use of force — and to respond to accusations that their officers violated state police policy. That policy generally bars local and state police from “facilitating” civil immigration enforcement.  As law enforcement officials said that officers acted professionally and largely denied allegations of misconduct, dozens of people in the room audibly scoffed and laughed.  READ MORE Under scrutiny was the fact that local and state police officers responded to an effort by federal immigration agents to seize a man they sought to arrest on suspicion of his unlawful reentry into the country.  And although immigration authorities detained three individuals that day from a house on Dorset Street in South Burlington, which was surrounded by protesters, the man they were seeking was not in the house.  What started out as a standoff between protesters and law enforcement officers escalated into a chaotic confrontation throughout the day. And along the way, state police troopers sometimes stood alongside federal immigration officers, notably helping clear a path for the federal officers to enter the Dorset Street house.  It has led activists to demand a probe into the police presence and police use of force that day, bringing the issue to the attention of lawmakers.  “We are here to protect Vermonters, and that’s what we attempted to do last week,” said Col. Matthew Birmingham, director of the Vermont State Police.  While a few lawmakers out of the panel of about a dozen interrogated whether that was true — or if those attempts were enough — others remained silent or only asked clarifying legal questions. During the Thursday hearing, lawmakers only heard from law enforcement officials — and said they would table protester accounts to another day. Bill Breault, the South Burlington police chief, said he “was left with no option” but to ask for help from the state police and other local police departments.  Jennifer Morrison, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Safety, said state and local police were stuck trying to balance the competing interests of protecting the safety of protesters and protecting the safety of law enforcement, including federal officers. People listen as South Burlington Police Chief William Breault, right, speaks before a joint meeting of the House and Senate judiciary committees to discuss the role of local law enforcement in an ICE raid in South Burlington last week at the Statehouse in Montpelier on March 19, 2026. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger But activists say they don’t buy that argument and don’t see it as a justification for police presence or what they called aggression toward protesters. Activists specifically accuse state and local police of violating the state’s fair and impartial policing policy, which says that state and local police officers shall not “facilitate the detention of individuals by federal immigration authorities for suspected civil immigration violations.”  When it comes to criminal immigration violations, the policy states that “enforcement of federal criminal immigration law is generally not a priority.”  When officers entered the house, federal authorities were executing a criminal warrant for a man suspected of unlawful reentry into the country. But because the man officials sought wasn’t in the house, the three people detained were arrested under a federal civil detainment policy, said Will Lambek, an organizer for immigrant advocacy organization Migrant Justice. Brault said local officers helped clear a path for federal officers to enter the house because they were told federal officials had a warrant to enter the house and were going to execute the warrant “using any means necessary.”  They hoped to prevent potentially more violent altercations between federal officers and protesters by involving local officers, he said.  Lambek said in a press conference after the hearing that state and local police worked “hand in glove” with immigration officials, violating the state’s policing policy — especially because the immigration action ended up being a civil immigration effort.  During the Thursday meeting in the Capitol, Morrison said that state police arrived at the scene to help keep everyone safe, including protesters. At one point during the meeting Morrison described the local police presence as a “public caretaking function.”  But Finn Lester-Niles, who said he attended the March 11 protest, said in an interview that state and local officers came “to brutalize protesters.”  At one point during the protest, Lester-Niles said, when he was not touching an officer or being aggressive toward one, an officer ripped off the goggles he was wearing and pepper sprayed him at close range. Lester-Niles said he was not sure who that officer was.  Law enforcement officials acknowledged that tensions at the scene began to escalate as more enforcement arrived. But Burlington Interim Police Chief Shawn Burke, whose officers responded to the scene, blamed certain protesters for making matters worse.  “As the crowd grew on Dorset Street, the peaceful activists were joined by agitators, a Trojan Horse of sorts, leading way to an escalation instigated by the crowd,” Burke said. He went on to add that protesters ignored the orders of police officers, saying there needs to be “greater accountability from the criminal legal system to address the violent agitators who clothe themselves as activists.”  After his comment, the room erupted into scoffs and laughs, with some onlookers shaking their heads. Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham, asked the room to settle down.  In a press conference after the meeting, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, said that when she was at the protest herself, the first instances of violence she saw “were at the hands of the Vermont State Police.”  When protesters stood in front of the door to the house that federal officers wanted to enter, Vyhovsky said police officers “violently threw people off of the stairs, into the bushes and onto the ground.” Lester-Niles said he didn’t believe that federal officers would have been able to detain people in the house without help from local police. He said they “absolutely” facilitated the effort.  During the Thursday meeting, officials brushed off allegations of officer misconduct, declining to jump to conclusions until the Vermont Department of Public Safety completes its internal affairs investigation into the event. Only one local police officer, from Burlington’s department, is under investigation for their behavior day, according to Burke.  Morrison said that Vermont law enforcement has worked hard to create and enforce its anti-bias policing policy. She asked the room to collaborate rather than casting blame.  “Someone apparently had to be the villain in the story,” Morrison said.  Read the story on VTDigger here: Local police officials defend officers’ conduct during immigration operation, blame ‘agitators’ . ...read more read less