Advocates say immigration officers arrest 14 at Colchester hotel

Law enforcement officers arrested 14 people Thursday morning at a Colchester hotel, according to John Mohan, a Boston-based spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Officers from ICE arrested the workers at about 5 a.m. Thursday as they left the Days Inn in Colchester, where they were staying as guests, Will Lambek, a spokesman for Burlington-based advocate group Migrant Justice, said.

Lambek said the workers were part of a construction crew, but he declined to name the company.

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Federal court documents confirm the date and location of the raid.

ICE pursued the workers after receiving information about "a work crew of suspected illegal aliens" from the U.S. Marshals Service on Jan. 8, according to a sworn affidavit filed Friday in federal court by Robert Berger, a deportation officer with the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations office in St. Albans.

ICE officers conducted a joint operation "along with other law enforcement personnel" on Jan. 18, according to the court paperwork. Berger did not identify other law enforcement agencies that were involved.

VTDigger.org first reported the arrests Monday.

ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer said Monday afternoon he was unable to respond to questions from the media because of the government shutdown.

One worker, Luis Suarez-Lopez, faces a criminal charge of illegal reentry, according to records filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington.

Berger wrote in an affidavit that Suarez-Lopez is a citizen of the Dominican Republic and had tried to enter the United States in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2003 using a birth certificate in another name. He was later removed from the United States two additional times in 2006 and 2009, according to the affidavit.

Suarez-Lopez is represented by an attorney from the Federal Public Defender's Office and is due in court Tuesday. Michael Desautels, the federal public defender, declined to comment Monday.

"This immigration raid is on a different scale from anything we’ve seen in Vermont before," Lambek said in a telephone interview Monday. "Arresting 14 people in one action is much larger than what we generally deal with, but the reality of immigration agents targeting and arresting immigrants in Vermont is nothing new, unfortunately."

Lambek said some workers arrested in Colchester have been detained in New Hampshire and face deportation proceedings. Migrant Justice is working to connect them with legal representation.

Four Vermont state senators have sponsored a new bill that would allow the state Office of the Defender General to represent people in immigration matters. Lambek said Migrant Justice supports the bill because many people in deportation proceedings lack legal representation.

Contact April McCullum at 802-660-1863 or amccullum@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @April_McCullum.

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