On an official Vermont government webpage, the Attorney General writes: “My heart breaks for the families being separated by the Trump administration, especially children being separated from a parent.”

The statement appears in state-issued legal guidance about immigration enforcement. It does not appear anywhere in guidance about Vermont’s own criminal justice system, which lawfully separates parents from children every day through arrest, detention, and incarceration.

That selective framing is not a matter of law. It is a matter of preference—and it exposes an inconsistency in how enforcement authority is treated depending on who is doing the enforcing.

Public debate around immigration enforcement increasingly treats interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as fundamentally different from ordinary law enforcement encounters. In Vermont, that distinction is reinforced by official guidance that frames civil immigration enforcement as uniquely coercive or dangerous. Yet when examined mechanically and legally, the core features of ICE encounters closely resemble the everyday policing practices Vermonters routinely accept without controversy.

The issue is not immigration itself. It is the selective application of rule-of-law principles—and the use of imprecise language to generate fear where none is structurally warranted.

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What Vermont Requires During a Police Stop

A routine traffic stop in Vermont establishes a baseline for lawful state authority. When signaled by police, a driver is legally required to pull over, remain at the scene, follow lawful orders, and produce government-issued documents: a driver’s license and vehicle registration. Failure to comply can escalate the encounter and may itself constitute a violation.

Crucially, even if the stop later proves improper—no speeding, no equipment issue—the driver has no right to resist, obstruct, or interfere. Vermont law, like the law nationwide, is clear: enforcement happens first; disputes are resolved later in court. The remedy for an unlawful stop is suppression of evidence or civil liability, not roadside defiance.

This framework is broadly accepted as the foundation of the rule of law. Compliance is mandatory. Objections are judicial.

Vermont Law Compels Identification

Vermont law goes further than mere expectation. Under 24 V.S.A. § 1983, a law enforcement officer who reasonably believes a person has violated a municipal ordinance may detain that person solely to compel identification. If the individual refuses to identify themselves satisfactorily, the statute requires that they be brought before a Criminal Division judge for that purpose. Continued refusal authorizes immediate civil contempt proceedings. In other words, Vermont law explicitly permits detention and judicial compulsion to force identification—even for low-level ordinance violations—without any accompanying expressions of moral concern or official alarm.

How Civil Immigration Enforcement Actually Works

Civil immigration enforcement operates under a parallel, well-established legal structure. Federal law requires non-citizens over the age of 18 to carry proof of lawful immigration status. Immigration officers are authorized, in certain circumstances, to question individuals about status, request documentation, and make civil arrests—even absent a criminal charge.

Immigration law is primarily civil, not criminal. Removal is treated as the loss of a legal privilege, not a penal sentence. These authorities are statutory, not discretionary inventions, and they have been repeatedly upheld by courts.

Mechanically, the similarities to traffic enforcement are obvious. Both systems involve regulated privileges. Both require documentation to establish lawful participation. Both prohibit resistance or obstruction, even when enforcement is disputed. And in both cases, the appropriate forum for contesting legality is the court system, not the street.

This is not a uniquely American concept. U.S. citizens traveling in Mexico must carry their passport and the Forma Migratoria Múltiple (FMM) (tourist card) at all times, as mandated by Mexican law, and present it upon request by authorities. Failure to do so can result in detention for up to 60 days, according to U.S. Embassy guidance, and referral to immigration authorities. The same is true in Canada and most developed countries. Outside the United States, routine status verification of foreign nationals is treated as normal law enforcement—not a civil liberties emergency.

Vermont’s treatment of immigration enforcement as uniquely coercive therefore reflects not a legal distinction, but a political one.

The Language That Changes the Perception

Despite these parallels, Vermont’s official guidance treats immigration enforcement as categorically different. The Attorney General’s “Your Rights When Encountering Immigration Officials in Vermont” materials emphasize silence, refusal of consent, delay, and non-cooperation. While much of this advice is legally accurate, its cumulative effect is strategic rather than neutral. These are not behaviors Vermont treats as benign when directed at state or local law enforcement; in those contexts, refusal to identify oneself or cooperate can result in detention, judicial compulsion, or contempt. The guidance therefore does more than inform—it actively reframes enforcement as something to be resisted rather than complied with and contested later in court.

More importantly, the guidance relies on imprecise and overly broad language. “Immigrants” is used as a catch-all where legally distinct categories—lawful permanent residents, visa holders, migrant farm workers, temporary H-2 visa holders, and unlawfully present individuals—would be more accurate and more informative. Lumping these groups together collapses meaningful legal distinctions and creates the impression that enforcement is indiscriminate, when in reality it applies only to a subset of non-citizens—an outcome that undermines, rather than clarifies, any claimed commitment to the rule of law.

The result is fear generation through ambiguity. Lawful residents and temporary workers are encouraged to view routine status verification as a threat and arbitrary abuse, rather than as the ordinary administrative process it is in any regulated system.

Why the Comparison to Policing Matters

Consider how Vermonters would react if similar rhetoric were applied to traffic enforcement. If a publication described police as “detaining motorists” without noting that drivers were stopped for violations, outrage would be immediate. If license checks were framed as “paper demands,” or routine stops likened to authoritarian surveillance, the characterization would be dismissed as absurd.

And critically, no one argues that bystanders have a right to intervene in traffic stops. A third party who pulls over, yells at an officer, or attempts to block enforcement would be arrested—correctly—for obstruction. Disagreement with the law does not grant a right to interfere with its execution.

Yet that same logic is often abandoned in immigration contexts, where non-cooperation and obstruction are reframed as civil resistance.

Vermont’s Non-Cooperation Model

Vermont law restricts state and local law enforcement from participating in civil immigration enforcement and cooperation agreements with federal authorities. Civil arrests—including immigration-related arrests—are barred in courthouses except under narrow circumstances. Schools and other institutions are encouraged to deny access absent judicial warrants.

These policies do not repeal federal law. They raise the cost of enforcing it. That is a policy choice, and it may be defended as such. What it cannot honestly be defended as is neutral civil liberties protection when the same state insists on strict compliance with ordinary policing authority in every other domain.

The Consistency Test

The core question is simple: would the standards applied to immigration enforcement be tolerated if applied universally?

If every contested traffic stop justified resistance, delay, and third-party interference, the system would collapse. Courts would never see cases because enforcement would never conclude. The same is true for immigration law.

Civil liberties depend on consistency, not sympathy. If “comply now, object later” is the rule for state police, it cannot be discarded selectively for federal enforcement based on political preference.

That inconsistency—more than immigration itself—is the unresolved problem Vermont’s current approach refuses to confront.

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Dave Soulia | FYIVT

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