Public Statement
Vermont Racial Justice Alliance

Homeland Security Task Force Exercise In South Burlington

March 16, 2026

The Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) executed its first publicly coordinated exercise in Vermont on March 11, 2026 in South Burlington. The pretext was an immigration raid, but it was a civil rights warning. It showed what happens when fear, secrecy, and force are allowed to outrun democracy. It also showed something bigger than ICE alone: a HSTF that can pull federal, state, and local power into the same operation while leaving the public with few clear answers about accountability. Vermont cannot call itself just while families are terrorized, communities are destabilized, and civil rights are treated as optional.

Liberal progressives, organizations, elected and appointed officials, organizers and clergy have framed this national moment as “an immigration issue” and have painted ICE as the bad guys. The truth is that it is easier to do that than to work through the personal, organizational, political, economic, and moral relationship many possess to the very systems that produce and perpetuate a false narrative of white supremacy with real outcomes. Even saying this risks creating division. But the true attempt at division began with this administration and the racist policies that made it necessary for us to respond in the first place.

Failing to focus on the fact that the edifice beneath this moment is the legacy of slavery—systemic racism—does the whole counter approach a disservice. It ignores the systemic nature of the challenge and relegates us to an approach that is largely reactionary. Some reaction is needed. We must protect people in real time. But too often that response becomes perfunctory and distracts from the deep reflective work, political courage, and organizational transformation required to confront systemic racism at its root.

It is true that many immigrants are being impacted, and we are right to focus on the protection and care of the entire immigrant community, including migrants, refugee families, asylum seekers, and all of our siblings, no matter their immigration status. We express our love, our solidarity, and our deep support for the impacted migrant community and their families. But if we stop with this shortsighted analysis, we miss an opportunity for personal growth, fail to embrace the totality of what can be done at the state level to protect democracy for everyone, and fail to hold our elected and appointed officials responsible for using the full range of their authority and power to protect the people of the Great State of Vermont.

It is important to say with transparency that there are real challenges in this work. Liberal progressives often struggle to navigate conflict that is born in whiteness. Organizations and institutions often choose comfort over transformation. Elected and appointed officials make political tradeoffs, even when their intentions may appear well meaning. Clergy often struggle with the conflict of navigating their own privilege, including whiteness, while balancing the perceived political positions of their congregations on matters such as race. Elected and appointed officials also face political and economic conflicts with the work of eradicating systemic racism and other forms of oppression. Some of this is pacified by an incessant focus on immigration issues and frustration with ICE, either intentionally or inadvertently missing the deeper and more dangerous implications of systemic racism that serve as the edifice of injustice in the immigration system. Because the systems that produce these disparate outcomes also in some ways benefit many of the people and institutions named above—or create risk of political, economic, or social loss—there is a tendency to work around the root problem. That only exacerbates systemic racism and other forms of oppression, worsens the harms across systems affecting other impacted groups, and obscures the impact of the current civil rights retrenchment that continues to upend democracy!

We say this plainly: this crisis is rooted in the same long history that began with slavery and grew into segregation, exclusion, over-policing, and racial control. The names of the systems change, but the pattern remains. This is another racial backlash that has conflated civil rights with DEI in an effort to kill them both, return to a divided nation of racial hierarchies, and once again dash any hope of a multiracial democracy.

We warned about this national emergency in July 2025, explaining how federal civil rights divisions were being decommissioned, gutted, or politically repurposed. Over the last year, the federal government has pulled back from civil rights enforcement across agency after agency. Executive Order 11246, the 1965 federal contractor equal employment order signed by President Lyndon Johnson, was revoked in January 2025. EPA announced it was terminating its environmental justice and external civil rights arms. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was gutted by mass layoffs and regional office closures. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was upended and weaponized. The Social Security Administration closed its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, and the list goes on. We didn’t get any responses.

Since July, we have been calling on the Governor, mayors, and the Legislature to act on the Raise Up Justice Movement demands since the early summer of 2025. By October 2025, those demands were stated clearly and publicly. We asked the Governor to declare an emergency; call lawmakers back into session to do civil rights and disparate impact work; and establish oversight, transparency, and accountability for state police. We asked him to issue executive orders to: establish transparency and accountability for transfers of military equipment to state police; establish transparent state police communication and operational protocols with the Homeland Security Task Force; and create and operationalize a whole-of-government programmatic approach to racial equity. Mayors and city leaders were asked to do the same at the local level. Legislators were asked to come back into session early and pass laws that enhance civil rights funding and enforcement, establish consent decrees, address disparate impact law, and move core legislation including PR.4, H.361, and what would become H.382 and S.301. Those demands have not been hidden. They have been public, specific, and urgent for months. There has been little response to our demands that reflects a commitment to meeting this crucial moment. Some the policy put forth includes the following:

We initiated Proposal 4 (PR.4) in 2023 because we saw the writing on the wall. Its purpose is to add equal protection to the Vermont Constitution so that the government may not deny equal treatment under the law on account of protected characteristics. Last week, while the Homeland Security Task Force was deploying in South Burlington, the Senate again advanced PR.4. That continued Senate support matters. If passed, PR.4 will provide a state constitutional foundation for equal protection, independence from federal doctrinal collapse, capacity to address disparate impact and systemic harm, authority to scrutinize discriminatory algorithms, and constitutional support for durable civil rights policy. The Vermont House of Representatives must now complete the work of passing the equal protection constitutional amendment so that the people’s voice may be heard on the matter in November 2026. In a time of federal civil rights collapse, Vermont needs this constitutional safeguard.

S.301 is critical. As introduced, it is called the Vermont Civil Rights Sovereignty and Equal Protection Act of 2026. It would make multiple changes to Vermont’s anti-discrimination laws and create a Civil Rights Coordinating Council and a Civil Rights and Equal Protection Special Fund. This bill matters because it would help build real state civil rights capacity at a time when federal civil rights protections are unstable and often hostile to remedies for systemic harm. It would strengthen Vermont’s own ability to protect people in housing, public accommodations, and other key areas. But here again, the Legislature has not acted with the urgency this moment demands. As of now, there has been no action on this bill.

H.361 matters for a different but related reason. As introduced, it would create municipal and regional civilian oversight bodies with the power to receive, investigate, and address complaints against law enforcement. It would also let those bodies monitor law enforcement trends, make training recommendations, and take part in parts of the collective bargaining process. This bill goes to the heart of constitutional and accountable policing. A democracy cannot rely on internal review alone. People need independent oversight with real authority. Yet there has been no action on this bill this session. The Legislature has failed to act seriously in this serious moment.

H.382, the Vermont Justice Transparency Act, matters because it would require the Judiciary, the Vermont Crime Information Center, the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, and the Department of Corrections to collect and publicly post racially disaggregated criminal justice data. The Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Council explicitly called for Vermont to enact and strengthen H.382 to improve transparency and public reporting of justice system data, and it recorded testimony from the Office of Racial Equity, the Division of Racial Justice Statistics, and the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. H.382 is not symbolic. It is how the state builds the evidence needed to see patterns, identify harm, and stop pretending we do not know what is happening. The Legislature has discussed it, but it has not acted decisively enough to move it into law.

The Governor, the mayors, and the Legislature all share some responsibility for the present moment because none of them, together, have acted decisively enough. Their response has not matched the threat.

Vermont has been well aware of the legacy of slavery—systemic racism for years. The Office of Racial Equity was designed to address it.  The Legislature made a commitment to address it jointly Resolving Racism a “Public Health Emergency”. Further, the Division of Racial Justice Statistics reported in January 2025 that people of color, especially Black and Hispanic Vermonters, continue to face significant over-policing and disproportionate sentence lengths in Vermont’s justice system. In 2023 traffic stop data, Black males were ticketed 58% of the time, compared with 39% for White males, and White females received warnings instead of tickets 62% of the time compared with 42% for Black females. The 2026 Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Council report said the same core pattern remains: Black and Hispanic people still face elevated arrest rates in discretionary traffic-stop contexts, and Black people are more likely than White people to receive longer sentences and higher bond amounts. Those disparities were already unacceptable. They are now even more dangerous in a national climate where civil rights enforcement is being weakened and racial grievance is being used as public policy.

Outside the state reports, a 2025 University of Vermont update found that Black drivers in 2022–23 were stopped at a rate 30% higher than expected based on their share of the driving population, while Hispanic drivers were stopped at double their share. It also found Black drivers were 20% more likely to be arrested than White drivers and 100% more likely to be searched. The researchers found that the share of searched Black drivers found with contraband was a third lower than for White drivers in 2023, which they said points to racial bias in search decisions. Vermont’s overall stop rate was also almost 2.5 times the national average in 2022–23. These are not old stories. These are current warnings.

All of these racial disparities and many more have been exacerbated by racist national policy and by civil rights retrenchment over the past year. The moral and political message coming from our President tells us that DEI and civil rights policies hurt white people. That view is not a misunderstanding. It is a racist view of civil rights itself. It treats remedies for historic and ongoing discrimination as a form of unfairness to those who have long benefited from the system. That logic is dangerous because it turns civil rights upside down and makes equality sound like discrimination.

This is not accidental. It is part of a strategy. This regime uses racist policy and racist messaging to create division. It stirs fear, resentment, and confusion so that people will turn on one another instead of joining together around truth, dignity, and justice. That strategy is old. It was used to defend slavery. It was used after Reconstruction. It was used in Jim Crow. And it is being used now. Racism is wielded as a wedge to divide the public and distract from the concentration of power and harm. That is why the Raise Up Justice Movement insists on telling the truth plainly.  The legacy of slavery—systemic racism—is not a side issue in American life. The legacy of slavery is the reason civil rights became necessary, and civil rights are what make democracy possible. Civil rights are the guardrails that say no person is beneath the protection of the law and no government is above the limits of the law. When civil rights are weakened, democracy is weakened. Autocracy follows.

The need now is pressing. Vermont needs training, awareness, and education on the legacy of slavery, on how that legacy still shapes policing, housing, punishment, and power, and on why civil rights protections are what hold democracy together. The Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice System Advisory Panel’s 2026 report renewed its call for law enforcement training that includes the historical context of policing in America, past and current policies that criminalize people of color, and cultural sensitivity awareness. The same report also renewed the call for public oversight and for a racial equity impact assessment process for legislation. The Legislature has failed to enact these recommendations. Education is not extra. Training is not extra. Historical truth is not extra. They are the conditions for lawful, fair, democratic governance.

For those who have felt afraid to face this work, we understand that this is uncomfortable. We understand that many people fear loss, backlash, isolation, or retribution for speaking plainly about race, civil rights, and democracy. That fear is real, and it is part of how unjust systems protect themselves. It is by design that people are made to feel that telling the truth will cost too much. But silence also has a cost. Avoidance also has a cost. And we cannot protect one another, or preserve democracy, by pretending not to see what is happening.

Our faith teaches us that truth and justice belong together. We do not honor democracy by hiding the truth. We honor democracy by telling the truth, facing the harm, repairing what has been broken, and protecting the dignity of every person. That is the moral center of the Raise Up Justice Movement. We speak with passion because the stakes are high. We speak with concern because people are hurting. We speak with righteous indignation because what is happening is wrong. And we speak with hope because we still believe people can choose courage over fear, truth over division, and justice over silence.

That is why we close by restating the demands that have been clear since summer 2025:

Governor, mayors, and city managers:

• Declare a civil rights emergency.
• Demand that lawmakers remain in session until the civil rights and disparate impact work is complete.
• Establish oversight, transparency, and accountability for state police.
  Issue executive orders to:
  • establish transparency and accountability for transfers of military equipment to state police,
  • establish transparent state police communication and operational protocols with the Homeland Security Task Force,
  • create and operationalize a whole-of-government programmatic approach to racial equity.

Legislators:

• Remain in session until the completion of the passage of laws that enhance civil rights funding and enforcement. 
• Pass laws that establish state consent decrees.
• Create disparate impact laws.
• Pass core legislation including PR.4, H.361, H.382, and S.301.

We call people in now and welcome them into the challenge of this moment. Join us in building a movement rooted in truth, justice, nonviolence, and beloved community.

Raise Up Justice is not a one-issue campaign. It has clear objectives.

• Community resilience and building and maintaining mutual aid through social, economic, spiritual, emotional, legal, and other support systems is at the heart of our work. Folks and organizations involved in this campaign will be invited into that work of resilience, mutual aid, and collective care because we understand that at the end of the day, the cavalry is not coming and we are here to save ourselves.
• Second, education: teaching the truth about how the legacy of slavery birthed civil rights, and the fact that democracy for all fails without them, is the soul and essence of our multiracial moral fusion movement. Folks and organizations involved in this campaign will be invited to participate in this education work on the legacy of slavery, civil rights, and democracy.
• Finally, institutional transformation: we are always demanding that elected and appointed officials implement anti-racist and anti-oppression programs in state and municipal government; demanding civil rights and racial justice policies; and demanding effective oversight of law enforcement. These are the backbone of democratic survival.

The Raise Up Justice Movement exists to confront that truth. It is multiracial, gender neutral, intergenerational, interfaith, multi-abled, politically nonaffiliated, moral, fusion civil rights movement focussing on truth and justice. It centers the legacy of slavery because racial injustice and democracy cannot coexist.  It is grounded in the Golden Rule, focussed on civil rights, oriented to human rights, based on nonviolence and directed towards the beloved community.

The Raise Up Justice Campaign meets Thursday, March 19, 2026, at 6:00 PM at the Richard Kemp Center. 

Remote Access:  https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pcOqrqjgoEt2RKp3ga2M–Y4UKZscYcus

There is a place for you in this work.