VTDigger22%
Protesters again block access to ICE surveillance hub in Williston, prompting arrests 6%
By Shaun Robinson51%
7/24/2026, 6:05:08 PM
Keywords: Ice, Protest, Arrests, Williston, Surveillance, Immigration And Customs Enforcement, Trespass
BS Summary: This article contains 14 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Recency Bias, and Hasty Generalization, with Confirmation Bias as the most egregious example at 7.4% saturation with 47 hits. Analysis detected 331 faulty-reasoning hits from 639 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 21.8% and a BS Rank of 6% (20,675 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.50% of the article peer group.
Updated at 5:47 p.m.
WILLISTON — State and local police arrested 13 protesters at a U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement surveillance office in Williston on Friday morning.
The group intended to block ICE employees from accessing the facility at the start of the workday by sitting and standing in front of its entrances, according to protest organizers.
The protesters were taken to the Vermont State Police barracks in the same town.
At least a dozen of them were charged with unlawful trespass because they entered the office building, which is privately owned, and refused to leave, according to a state police press release.
Police did not specify a charge against the other protester because they are a juvenile.
All 13 were released after being processed at the barracks, state police said.
Julie Macuga, one of the organizers, said most of the protesters who were arrested came out to the ICE office intending or expecting to get detained.
Both state and Williston police officers carried some protesters out of an east-facing entrance to the building around 10 a.m., while others walked alongside the officers.
About 30 people in total first gathered inside or outside the facility, which has been the site of similar recent protests and arrests , around 7:30 a.m., according to Macuga.
She and other organizers described the protest as a response to the fatal shootings by ICE agents earlier this month of people in Maine and Texas, among other concerns.
The Williston facility , which is in the White Cap Business Park off Industrial Avenue, houses ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center.
Data collected at the office from publicly available sources, such as social media feeds, help ICE officers throughout the eastern U.S. know whom to arrest, according to federal records.
The facility is one of several U.S.
Department of Homeland Security offices in and around Williston.
Just down the road, ICE operates a national tip line out of another office building.
Several demonstrators Friday said that in addition to hindering the targeting center’s operations, they wanted to draw more public attention to that work.
“I just find it reprehensible that this is in our town,” said Moki Fox of Williston, who was holding a hand-drawn poster of a large eyeball.
“It’s just wrong.
If I don’t stand up, who will?
Everybody should be standing up.”
According to state police, the business park’s owner asked officers to remove the protesters from the property after they refused to leave when asked.
State and local police spoke with protest leaders, the release said.
Several protesters left the inside of the building, police said, while 13 others “indicated they’d need to be arrested.”
While protesters were being brought out in handcuffs, Fox and about a dozen others stood in the building’s parking lot holding banners and signs and chanting “shame” at police.
They also yelled, “You are not alone!”
as protesters were carried or guided out.
Some were driven off in a black van that did not appear to have any markings on the outside.
Those who were arrested and identified in the press release ranged in age from 20 to 74, according to state police.
At least seven are from Vermont, three are from New Hampshire and two are from New York State.
All are due to appear in Chittenden County Superior criminal court on Sept. 24, police said.
Sarah George, the Chittenden County State’s Attorney, declined to prosecute 13 people who were arrested or cited for trespassing at a similar demonstration at the same ICE facility in February.
Some of the same people arrested earlier this year were also arrested Friday, according to police press releases.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Protesters again block access to ICE surveillance hub in Williston, prompting arrests .
Analysis
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