WILLISTON, Vt. — Upper Valley activists are among 13 people facing criminal trespassing charges stemming from a protest of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Williston on Monday afternoon.
During the sit-in, a group of roughly 25 people gathered in the atrium of privately owned White Cap Business Park to protest a space occupied by ICE, at around 1 p.m., reading the names of 38 people who have died in ICE custody nationwide over the last year, said activist Dr. Donald Kollisch, 74, who works at the Good Neighbor Clinic in White River Junction and lives in Hanover.
They also sang protest songs such as the old union hymn “We Shall Not Be Moved” to the beating of a drum.
“Militarism and racism that run deep in our country takes many forms,” Kollisch said.
Kollisch was arrested on charges of criminal trespass along with Upper Valley residents Karen Bixler, 83, of Bethel, Douglas Smith, 85, of Sharon, and Roan Wade, a 22-year old activist who had been suspended by Dartmouth last spring for orchestrating a sit-in and arrested on the campus in October 2023 for a pro-Palestine demonstration.
Laura Simon, 72, of White River Junction, and another Vermonter from Jericho were not arrested, but issued citations on charges of criminal trespass at the scene and were released.
The 11 arrested and transported to the Williston State Police Barracks were all released that day on personal recognizance, and all 13 are scheduled to appear for arraignment on charges of criminal trespass, a misdemeanor level offense which carries a penalty of not more than three months in jail or a fine of up to $500 or both, on March 2 at 8:30 a.m. in Vermont Superior Court in Burlington.
The arrests took place after state police troopers and Williston police officers responded to White Cap Business Park and informed the protesters that they were trespassing, according to a Tuesday State Police news release. The protesters refused to be removed, police said.
“Protest leaders told (police) their goal was to be arrested,” the news release said.
Getting arrested “might be the mechanism,” said Kollisch. “The goal is for us to shut down this ICE office.”
Kollisch learned of the group organizing non-violently against ICE in Williston through his membership with the Women in Black, a world-wide group with an Upper Valley chapter that stands in silent vigil in solidarity with the people of Palestine every Wednesday at the southwest corner of the Dartmouth Green.
The Department of Homeland Security has rented a space in the privately owned White Cap Business Park, which includes private businesses and a medical office, to establish an East Coast Data Center for identifying targets of ICE, Kollisch said.
As reported on Tuesday in VTDigger, the building houses ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center.
A building map in the lobby of White Cap shows that a large space is leased to the U.S. General Services Administration. Property Manager Normand Stanislas told VTDigger the lease has existed for about 16 to 17 years.
One of the main reasons he said he joined the Monday protest is he wanted fellow New Englanders to be aware of the alleged ICE data center operating in their own backyard.
“By letting it stay there, we are all complicit,” he said. “Our main message is to the owners and the property managers to break their lease; to get rid of the ICE office.”
A voicemail left for Normand Stanislas, property manager of White Cap Park, was not returned by deadline.
About a dozen members from the same group held a previous ICE protest at White Cap Park in Williston on Jan. 22. Nobody was arrested or cited and Kollisch did not participate. But hearing about it inspired him to join Monday’s sit-in.
“We really want to call attention to the fact that ICE is demonstrably creating great suffering and damage all around the country, most notably in Minneapolis, Minnesota right now,” Kollisch said.
Kollisch has been an activist since he was a teenager. He was first arrested for protesting during the Vietnam War in the late ’60s.
Those early handcuffs haven’t stopped him from continuing to carry signs for a range of causes over the years, environmental concerns, the rights of women, the rights of people of color.
“My father was a Holocaust survivor,” he said. “As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I learned about the dangers of totalitarian government gradually taking control of civil society.”
His fear is that America is at risk of heading towards fascism.
“What I do is in honor of my father,” he said.