WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, this week introduced Vermont’s Wilmer Chavarria, Superintendent of the Winooski School District, during a bicameral forum focused on the Trump Administration’s cruel and inhumane mass deportation campaign. At the forum, Senator Welch expressed outrage against the Trump Administration’s unconstitutional, arbitrary, and cruel immigration policies and highlighted how these policies are impacting Vermont.
“You know, so many of the people here just show how wonderful new Americans are, wherever it is they come from. This indiscriminate round-up of people—because who knows why, it’s all arbitrary—is what this hearing is about today. So, we’re very proud to have a Vermonter with us today,” said Senator Welch.
Senator Welch’s introduction and exchange with Superintendent Chavarria focused on his experience with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the agency’s detention of a second grader in Chavarria’s school district who was placed in immigration detention in Texas while traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday:
“I think the American people don’t understand or don’t see what you’ve experienced. And that’s why it’s so important that you’re here, because people don’t want that to happen. And if it happens to somebody they know—if it happens in their neighborhood and it’s visible—I think the American people are pretty good people. And each of you has had such an honorable life and has gone through such a horrible experience—and that feeling of the power of the State taking you away and you being invisible and having no idea whether you’re going to get out and in the physical jeopardy that you were in,” said Senator Welch. “Telling your story so that the American people can see that what we’re not talking about is an open border; what we’re not talking about is criminals, who all of us want to be protected from; we’re talking about hard working people who have families, who have careers, who have aspirations, and who deeply, deeply believe in the American dream…I want to thank you for coming here and sharing your story, not just because you want to tell it to us but because it’s really important for the American people to hear it.”
Watch Senator Welch’s full remarks below:
View a photo of Senator Welch and Wilmer Chavarria here:
In his opening remarks, Superintendent Chavarria recalled his experience being detained by CBP at an airport in Houston, Texas, after returning home from visiting family in Nicaragua: “Since this incident, I do not feel free to travel. I am fearful that a visit to my mother could mean extended detention or a fabricated plot to destroy my life—like they threatened to. If the goal is to make some citizens feel like they are of a second class with only some of the rights, but not others, then they have succeeded. But I choose to believe that the pendulum will swing the other way, and that our collective disgust for these abuses will catalyze into a powerful backlash against overreach. I thank you for being here to support me and my fellow Americans as we ride out a dark time in our history.”
The bicameral forum follows the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) refusal to respond to multiple requests from members of these committees for information on the number of U.S. citizens who have been detained by CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The forum was hosted by members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The forum was led by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA-42) and attended by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC-AL), Ro Khanna (D-CA-17), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30), Melanie Stansbury (D-NM-01), Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA-10), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ-03), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12), and Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12).
Lawmakers heard testimony from five U.S. citizens who have been assaulted, detained, and denied constitutional rights by DHS agents, including Superintendent Chavarria; Dayanne Figueroa, a paralegal from Illinois; Javier Ramirez, a father from California; George Retes, a disabled U.S. Army veteran from California; and Andrea Velez, a marketing designer from California. The lawmakers also heard testimony from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Watch a livestream of the spotlight forum here.
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