I attended this morning’s Statehouse press conference slash rally slash call to arms in a packed Cedar Creek Room, and I’ll be writing about it. But something else has come up, and I think it’s even more urgent.

While dozens and dozens of like-minded people backstopped a group of lawmakers and advocates at the Statehouse, something very different had happened 24 hours earlier on a Franklin County dairy farm. According to a press release from Migrant Justice, agents of the U.S. Border Patrol entered the farm on Monday and dragged away eight farmworkers. The advocacy group called it “one of the largest worksite enforcement actions in recent Vermont history.”

The eight were taken to Vermont’s Northwest State Correctional Facility, which is where Mohsen Mahdawi is being held, illegally, without any charges against him.

Your taxpayer dollars at work. Doesn’t it make you feel proud to be a Vermonter?

Mahdawi is the cause célèbre of the moment in Vermont, and he was the focus of the Statehouse event. Resolutions supporting him were introduced this morning in both the state House and Senate, with more than enough co-sponsors to ensure passage. But he is only one small aspect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, no matter what their legal status.

Mahdawi himself is acutely aware of this. State Sen. Becca White, who witnessed Mahdawi’s abduction by federal agents concealing their identities in a caravan of unmarked vehicles, said that Mahdawi “is extremely concerned about his fellow detainees,” some who don’t readily speak or understand English, “many of them migrant farmers.”

Well, today he has eight more compadres behind bars. And Vermont, thanks to its agreement with the feds, is complicit in the Trump crackdown.

This is happening all over the country, it’s growing, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s a hell of a lot worse than the “rhetoric” that Phil Scott likes to talk about. It’s not hard to find many stories from across the country about federal raids targeting farmworkers. And according to the Associated Press, more than 1,000 international students have had their visas revoked, including one at Middlebury College.

I could go on, but this is meant to be a quick post. I’ll be back later with more on today’s press event.