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.

Scott responded to the ICE incident in the least effortful way possible — by releasing a written statement the day after the event. He could have held a press conference and taken questions. He could have gone to South Burlington. He could have met publicly with neighborhood residents, gone to the high school, or met with local officials. He didn’t do any of that.

His statement carefully avoided addressing the nationwide crackdown. His critique was purely on how it was executed. First paragraph:

“From my perspective, what unfolded yesterday in South Burlington was totally unnecessary. In this difficult national climate, it’s the responsibility of law enforcement officials to do their jobs in a safe and lawful way. The actions of federal law enforcement, from outside the state yesterday, further demonstrates a lack of training, coordination, leadership, and outdated tactics which put both peaceful protesters and Vermont law enforcement in a difficult situation.

“Totally unnecessary” was the headline-grabber, and it worked as intended — making it seem like a stronger statement than it actually was. He went on to emphasize that the bad actors were “from outside the state,” an artful nod to Vermont exceptionalism and a foreshadowing of more police-cosseting to come. (Not to mention that some of the ICE and Border Patrol agents are actually Vermont residents. Some of them used to work for state or local police agencies or sheriff’s departments.) The flatlander feds, to Scott, were not pursuing a flawed mission; rather they were guilty of “a lack of training, coordination, leadership, and outdated tactics.”

The victims, in Scott’s eyes, were not the people of color being persecuted or the non-suspects dragged away into detention (or the area residents whose lives were disrupted by the day-long standoff); they were — equally — the “peaceful protesters and Vermont law enforcement.” (The protesters don’t get off scot-free, pardon the expression; stay tuned for that.) Paragraph two:

Yesterday, Vermont State Police, along with the Burlington and Williston police departments responded, at the request of the South Burlington Police Department, to help ensure public safety for protesters, the general public, and law enforcement. I want to thank them for their professionalism throughout an incredibly challenging situation. 

Yeah, well, according to numerous press reports, state and local personnel didn’t limit themselves to ensuring “public safety.” They were actively complicit in helping ICE agents not only with crowd control, but with breaking into the besieged house. (At least some state troopers also wore masks, a troubling echo of the feds’ policy of concealing agents’ identities.) And their “professionalism” was questioned by many eyewitnesses. Paragraph three:

I want to be clear, how the events concluded, and the tactics deployed by federal officials, as well as actions of those there to agitate, further escalated a situation that was avoidable from the start. It’s examples like this that further divide communities and law enforcement and result in more harm being done than good.

There you go. Trump’s incompetent shock troops and the protesters are equally to blame. (Technically, he cites a broadly-defined subset of the protesters “there to agitate.”) Need I point out that if ICE hadn’t pursued its reckless, poorly-planned terror sweep, there would have been no protesters at all?

There are some real questions to answer about how state and local police interact with, and the feds’ crackdown. I’d really like to know about the masking policies of the VSP and local departments. Are they adopting the federal model? If so, that’s decidedly not a good thing and ought to be addressed in legislation. I write this on a day when the House and Senate Judiciary Committees held a joint hearing to take testimony from state and local police leaders. I wasn’t there, but I look forward to reading about the hearing, and following the course of legislation from here on.

Speaking of Scott administration complicity, the new head of the state prison system has reportedly cracked down on immigration lawyers’ access to detainees. Jon Murad, former Burlington police chief, claims that he has simply reinstated policies that were loosened by his predecessor. Maybe so, but is this really the time to cut back on detainees’ access to legal representation?

I think not. But it is the time to ask some serious questions of Murad, state and local police, and Phil Scott himself. He’s in charge, and he’s avoiding any kind of principled, courageous stand against what the Trump administration and his fellow Republicans are trying to do to our country.