Hanover
For instance, the move to revoke federal funding for municipalities that declare their intention not to report undocumented immigrants to immigration authorities was unlikely to affect Hanover, Town Manager Julia Griffin said.
“Not if, in fact, the goal is simply to ‘weed out’ illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes,” she said. “If the ultimate goal is to force out anyone in the country, illegal or not, because we distrust foreigners, then that’s a serious problem for Hanover, which is an internationally diverse community.”
Griffin said that Hanover police, like law enforcement in many other New Hampshire and Vermont communities, do not check on people’s immigration status — even if a suspect is charged with a crime. The department does not notify federal authorities when an unauthorized immigrant is encountered, she said.
Nevertheless, Griffin said, mere non-enforcement of federal residency laws is unlikely to be the standard that the Trump administration uses to punish municipalities; rather, the executive action is meant to discourage cities like Burlington and Winooski, which have publicly declared themselves sanctuaries.
Griffin said that she had resisted calls to make the same move in Hanover. She said there had been efforts among residents to put an article on the 2017 Town Meeting warrant to call the town a sanctuary. Her response to advocates who approached her with the idea, she said, was to note that Hanover already followed sanctuary policies, even if it didn’t call itself one.
As for the symbolic power of a town’s declaring itself a sanctuary, Griffin said, “there is some value to that … but it puts a target on your back.”
The town of Hanover has received “a few hundred thousand” dollars in bits and pieces from several different federal agencies in the past few years, she said, including grants for emergency services equipment and bulletproof vests for police officers.
Devon Chaffee, executive director of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, questioned whether Trump even had the authority to enforce his order.
Nationally, she said in an email, “federal law does not require cities and states to help with immigration enforcement, which is the responsibility of the federal government. Any local decision to offer resources to federal immigration enforcement agencies is voluntary.
“President Trump does not have the legal authority to carry out this threat to defund cities and states that protect people’s rights without regard to immigration status,” Chaffee said. “Congress has never authorized the president to defund states and localities that stay clear of the deportation business. If Congress enacted such a law, it would be struck down as unconstitutional. President Trump is trying to bypass Congress.”
Chaffee said that the ACLU nationally would support cities and state in suing Trump if he attempted to revoke funding; in New Hampshire, Chaffee said, she is not aware of towns or cities that would be affected by Trump’s order.
A spokesman for New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on Thursday said the state’s new chief executive did not support sanctuaries and noted that the state did not have any.
Across the border in Vermont, where multiple communities have declared their intention not to turn in immigrants for residency violations, State Police Public Information Officer Scott Waterman cited his agency’s current policy toward undocumented immigrants, and said the Department of Safety’s lawyers were reviewing the executive order for its potential impact on the state.
“Detecting or apprehending individuals whose only violation of law is that they are foreign citizens present in the United States without authorization and proper documentation is not a law enforcement priority for the Vermont State Police,” the policy reads, in part.
“Accordingly, except as noted below, members should not use agency resources, equipment or personnel for the purpose of detecting or apprehending individuals whose only violation of law is that they are present in the United States without authorization and proper documentation.”
Some other authorities say they are already in compliance with President Trump’s order.
Reached by telephone on Thursday, Grafton County Sheriff Doug Dutile said his department as a matter of policy turned unauthorized immigrants over to federal authorities.
“If we come into contact with an illegal, or it appears to be an illegal, we just contact border patrol and turn it over to them,” Dutile said.
In Lebanon, Police Chief Richard Mello on Thursday said that his department did not have a specific policy regarding undocumented immigrants, but that his officers did occasionally contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they suspected or knew that a person involved in a crime lacked legal residency status.
“We don’t actively, affirmatively look for immigration status violators,” he said. “But if we have someone who comes across our radar, usually from an arrest, where we can’t find their identity, looks like they may be illegal, we do contact ICE to see what their pleasure may be.”
He added, “That does not happen very often, I’ll tell you.”
One area in immigration that Trump has not yet touched is President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which allows people without legal residency who were brought here during childhood to register with the government to avoid deportation.
Some students at Dartmouth College have enrolled in the program, and administrators for years have provided them with legal aid in signing up.
College President Phil Hanlon has declined to call Dartmouth a “sanctuary” campus, but in November joined hundreds of other higher-education presidents in a letter expressing support for DACA.
“While the responsibility for enforcement of immigration laws lies with federal officials — not Dartmouth College — there are a number of specific actions that we can and will take, if necessary, in the interests of our students,” Hanlon said in a December letter to alumni provided by a college spokeswoman. “In particular, as required by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Dartmouth will require immigration officials to have a judicial order to obtain information concerning students. No information will be provided unless Dartmouth’s legal counsel has reviewed the request and determined that it is required by law. We will also require immigration officials to have a warrant to enter non-public areas of our campus.”
Another big-ticket executive action from Trump this week was a 90-day hiatus in new hires on the federal level, a move that in the Upper Valley may have affected a hospital and a research center and that spurred critics to ask what the effect on critical health care services would be.
Spokesmen for the White River Junction VA Hospital and the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, in Hanover, were close-mouthed about the order’s effect on their organizations on Thursday.
“(CRREL) continues its normal, daily, research, development and engineering routines,” said spokesman Bryan Armbrust, who did not respond to further questions.
VA spokesman Andy LaCasse said he couldn’t comment on whether the hospital had any open positions that weren’t being filled because of the freeze. He offered only a statement from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington that said that the VA “intends to exempt anyone it deems necessary for public safety, including frontline caregivers.”
Area residents, however, said that the hospital had rescinded some offers made to potential employees who had not taken their seats by the time the order was issued.
That included Brad Morrill-Cornelius, a registered nurse who moved here from Connecticut to take a job at the VA, according to his wife, Shannon.
“We are lucky,” she said in an email. “My husband was taking a PRN position at the VA in addition to his full time job at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. There are others who have quit jobs, given notice, moved here to start new jobs with the VA — even physicians with signed contracts — who are being told that now there is no place for them.”
Shannon Morrill-Cornelius said that prior to Trump’s order the VA’s application and hiring process had taken so long that her husband had applied for and gotten another job, but that the VA had pleaded with him to also pursue a position there.
The hospital is “terribly understaffed,” she said, and “the people who are here and were planning on a paycheck aren’t going to get one, and the veterans aren’t going to get the kind of care they deserve.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., attacked the freeze through a spokesman on Thursday.
“In Vermont, it’s already clear that the consequences will be wide ranging, affecting everything from water quality to access to health care and wait times for veterans,” the spokesman, David Carle, said in an email.
“While the new administration has promised to serve the needs of rural communities, the freeze comes at a time when many of the USDA positions directly serving Vermont farmers already are vacant, locking in place a deficit that will hurt rural communities as Spring rapidly approaches,” he said.
A statement attributed to Leahy himself followed. “Reducing the workforce by forced attrition is mindless, ineffective management. Would a Trump Hotel continue to operate without key maintenance staff simply because those positions happened to be open when a hiring freeze took effect? Should veterans be forced to make do without audiology services simply because an audiologist position was vacant on Jan. 20?”
Carle said that Leahy, as vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had asked the panel’s staff to assess the impact of this freeze in Vermont and elsewhere.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.