Brattleboro Police Chief Jeremy Evans said at a special selectboard meeting Monday that his police department will take a different approach if ICE comes to town than Keene’s police department did last month, video of the meeting shows.

While the Brattleboro department often collaborates with federal agencies on other types of investigations, he said Brattleboro police have no interest in participating in immigration enforcement. Allowing ICE to stage at their station would be a hard “no,” Evans said.

“And if they showed up at our facility, we would go out and find out who was there … and we would ask them to leave,” he said. “We’re not going to be a part of that.”

Evans said the approach would be similar if ICE was seen somewhere else in town, and he asked residents to call Brattleboro police if they see ICE agents, since the department likely wouldn’t get a heads-up about their presence from the feds.

In Keene last month, ICE agents staged at the Keene police station. They informed Keene dispatchers of their arrival and used the station’s parking lot and facilities over several days as they conducted enforcement activities in the city.

ICE did not respond to Sentinel requests for comment, but a local advocate who works closely with immigrants said the activity led to three arrests. One man was briefly held in a Massachusetts jail before a judge ruled his detention was illegal.

Keene Police Chief Steven Stewart has also said his department would share any information with ICE that the federal agency requested.

In part, the difference in approach between police departments can be attributed to differences in state policy.

“New Hampshire has different rules that they play by,” Evans said. “It’s very different.”

For one, New Hampshire’s “anti-sanctuary” laws ban municipalities or police departments from impeding ICE activity, at risk of losing state funding.

Another difference is that Vermont police officers have a legal Duty to Act, meaning they’re not just empowered but actually required to intervene if another law enforcement officer is, for example, using excessive force. Police officers in Brattleboro are routinely trained on that practice, Evans said.

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