I haven’t written about last week’s appalling, wasteful, inhumane, dangerous, and just plain stoooooooooooooooooopid ICE action on Dorset Street in South Burlington. You know, the one that endangered countless area residents and students and staff at SoBu High, caused the closure of one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares for hours on end, needlessly endangered children and anti-ICE protesters, and ended up with the detention of people ICE wasn’t looking for in the first place. (Oh, and according to Seven Days, ICE agents showed up at the suspect house WITHOUT A WARRANT, which caused hours of delay while the situation grew tenser and tenser.)

Because, you know, they needed some trophies.

I haven’t written because our news media actually rose to the occasion, offering consistent, detailed coverage of the raid and its aftermath. First prize goes to Seven Days for sticking to the story and providing meaty follow-ups, but multiple outlets put their shoulders to the wheel and kept on pushing in a way we rarely see in our age of diminished newsrooms. But there is one aspect of this sorry misadventure that falls squarely in the purview of this Vermont Political Observer.

Which is, Gov. Phil Scott’s ongoing efforts to walk a tightrope between humanity and the Republican administration in Washington. His contributions are unsatisfying, unedifying, and unlikely to work if the goal is to keep Vermont out of Trump’s crosshairs.

They sure aren’t doing anything to help Vermont’s immigrant communities. Worse, outside of the occasional carefully-worded condemnation, Scott’s government is actively complicit with Trump’s racist, authoritarian crackdown. The stain on our collective conscience is still growing, and Scott bears his share of responsibility for that.

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