The Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, a 69-year-old Episcopal priest from Bradford, was one of seven clergy members arrested Friday morning after blocking the doors of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Williston.
“We have a clergy group that’s been working on resistance to some of the tactics of ICE and mass deportations that are going on,” Kooperkamp said in an interview Friday afternoon. “We decided just to block the doors, to try to disrupt the activity for the day.”
Kooperkamp, who has served at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Barre since 2012, said the group was mostly Christian, with some interfaith clergy as well.
“Out of our religious values, we believe that we need to take care of our neighbors,” he said. “That’s called to us from our religious traditions, and that’s why we were there.”
According to a Vermont State Police, the group entered a private office building in Williston to protest federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and would not leave. Troopers and Williston police spoke with the protest’s leaders. Some demonstrators left on their own. The rest indicated they would have to be arrested.
Kooperkamp described the same moment.
“The Williston police and Vermont state troopers warned us that we were trespassing — that if we didn’t move, we would be arrested,” he said. “So we didn’t move. We were arrested.”
All seven were cited for unlawful trespass, taken to the state police barracks in Williston, and released. Kooperkamp said they were fingerprinted and photographed there. They are due in the criminal division of Vermont Superior Court in Burlington on Oct. 20 at 8:30 a.m.
Along with Kooperkamp, state police identified those arrested as Catherine Bock, 78, of Burlington; Jessica Derise, 54, of Williston; Rebecca Girrell, 47, of South Burlington; Elizabeth Gleich, 36, of Middlebury; Karen Johnston, 58, of Colchester; and Susan McMillan, 65, of Colchester.
The building houses private businesses and medical offices, as well as federal offices. Kooperkamp said the group was careful about their intentions.
“We stayed away from all that. We were literally just in front of the doors of the ICE facility that open off of the main atrium in the building,” he said. “We did not block any other public access to any of the other businesses or entities that operate there. This was simply targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s surveillance offices that they have there.”
Kooperkamp said the Episcopal bishop of Vermont, Shannon MacVean-Brown, knew that he and Archdeacon Susan McMillan planned to take part, and supported them.
She “indicated support for this conscientious objection and breaking of the law,” he said.
Asked why his faith put him in front of those doors, Kooperkamp pointed to scripture.
“There’s a long history, both in our Hebrew and Jewish origins, about welcoming of the stranger and keeping care of the alien in our land,” he said, “As one of our scriptures says, in the book of Hebrews — by welcoming the stranger, we entertained angels unawares.”
The Williston site has become a regular target for immigration protests. It houses an ICE data operation that mines law enforcement and immigration databases to develop leads on people targeted for deportation. State police arrested 11 people there in February — the Chittenden County state’s attorney declined to prosecute — and four more in May.
Upper Valley residents have been among those affected. Five people from the region were charged in the February action, including a Hanover physician, a Dartmouth student, and residents of Bethel, Sharon and White River Junction.
Kooperkamp said he had no regrets.
“Sometimes you have to do some civil disobedience because the laws and the systems are unjust,” he said. “Call attention to that, so we can build a better world together.”