WINOOSKI, Vt. — A small school district in Vermont was hit with racist and threatening calls and messages after a Somali flag was put up a week ago in response to President Donald Trump referring to Minnesota’s Somali community as “ garbage.”

The Winooski School District began to display the flag Dec. 5 to show solidarity with a student body that includes about 9% people of Somali descent.

“We invited our students and community to come together for a little moment of normalcy in a sea of racist rhetoric nationally,” said Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria, himself a Nicaraguan immigrant. “We felt really good about it until the ugliness came knocking Monday morning.”

The Somali flag was flown alongside the Vermont state flag and beneath the United States flag at a building that includes K-12 classrooms and administrative offices. Somali students cheered and clapped, telling administrators the flag flying meant a great deal to them, he said.

What ensued was a deluge of phone calls, voicemails and social media posts aimed at district workers and students. Some school phone lines were shut down — along with the district website — as a way to shield staff from harassment. Chavarria said videos of the event did not also show the U.S. and Vermont flags were still up and spread through right-wing social media apps, leaving out the important context.

“Our staff members, our administrators and our community are overwhelmed right now, and they are being viciously attacked. The content of those attacks is extremely, extremely deplorable. I don’t know what other word to use,” Chavarria said Tuesday.

Mukhtar Abdullahi, an immigrant who serves as a multilingual liaison for families in the district who speak Somali and a related dialect, said “no one, no human being, regardless of where they come from, is garbage.” Students have asked if their immigrant parents are safe, he said.

“Regardless of what happens, I know we have a strong community,” Abdullahi said. “And I’m very, very, very thankful to be part of it.”

The district is helping law enforcement investigate the continued threats, Chavarria said, and additional police officers have been stationed at school buildings as a precaution. Winooski is near Burlington, about 93 miles (150 kilometers) south of Montreal, Canada.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called the calls and messages the school received “the actions of individuals who have nothing to do with” Trump.

“Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here,” Jackson said in an email late Thursday. “And American schools should fly American flags.”

Federal authorities last week began an immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota to focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S. Trump has claimed “they contribute nothing ” and said “I don’t want them in our country.” The Minneapolis mayor has defended the newcomers, saying they have started businesses, created jobs and added to the city’s cultural fabric. Most are U.S. citizens and more than half of all Somali people in Minnesota were born in the U.S.

At the school district in Vermont, Chavarria said his position as superintendent gave him authority to fly the flag for up to a week without the school board’s explicit approval.

The school district also held an event with catered Somali food, and Chavarria plans to continue to find ways to celebrate its diversity.

“I felt sorrow for the students, the families, the little kids that are my responsibility to keep safe. And it’s my responsibility to make them feel like they belong and that this is their country and this is their school district. This is what we do,” he said.

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Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont police officers are working overtime shifts along the Canadian border under a federal program that critics say could violate the state’s anti-bias policing laws.

“Up here, we’re so small we rely on our partner agencies,” said Swanton Village Police Chief Matthew Sullivan.

On a recent frosty Friday, Sullivan was patrolling along the Canadian border as part of Homeland Security’s Operation Stonegarden. The chief and other local officers work overtime shifts for the U.S. Border Patrol.

“It acts as a force multiplier because we’re able to put more officers out in these rural areas in Vermont,” Sullivan said.

During an exclusive ride-along, Sullivan showed us a field where, as recently as last fall, migrants were smuggled across the border. “These people are really being taken advantage of,” he said.

From 2022 to 2023, U.S. Border Patrol encountered just shy of 7,000 people entering the country illegally in the region, more than the previous 11 years combined.

In several instances, police say cars have tried to crash through a gate in Swanton along the border. Others enter from Canada on foot and get picked up by cars with out-of-state plates.

The chief says the illegal crossings strike fear among local parents. “They didn’t feel safe allowing their kids outside to play, which is extremely unfortunate,” Sullivan said.

Through Operation Stonegarden — which was created in the wake of 9/11 — Sullivan and his officers get overtime pay from the feds. “We’re kind of another set of eyes and ears for border patrol,” Sullivan said. His department also gets equipment and training.

Six agencies in Vermont participate in Stonegarden: The Vermont State Police, Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department, Essex County Sheriff’s Department, Orleans County Sheriff’s Department, Newport City Police Department, and the Swanton Village Police Department. Some three dozen across New England participate in Stonegarden. These agencies collect relatively small amounts from the feds — $760,000 in Vermont, $190,000 in New Hampshire, and $1 million in Maine.

But amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Stonegarden is under scrutiny.

“This has become quite relevant to a lot of people once again,” said Paul Heintz, a longtime Vermont journalist who now writes for the Boston Globe. “These three states have dramatically different policies when it comes to local law enforcement working with federal law enforcement.”

Vermont has some of the strictest rules about police assisting federal immigration officials. The Fair and Impartial Policing Policy limits cooperation with the feds and says immigration status, language, and proximity to the border cannot be the basis of an investigation.

“Vermonters have made clear through their elected representatives that they want state and local law enforcement to be focusing on state and local issues,” said Lia Ernst with the ACLU of Vermont. She says Stonegarden is crossing the line. “They don’t want their police to be a cog in the mass deportation machinery of any administration but particularly the Trump administration,” Ernst said.

The ACLU and other critics are concerned that Stonegarden creates a cozy relationship between local police and immigration officials that can be used to enforce the president’s immigration crackdown.

Heintz says the distinction between civil and criminal immigration enforcement can be fluid. In most civil cases in which the feds seek to deport, Vermont law enforcement can’t play a role because it’s against the law. In criminal cases, which local police can enforce, immigrants can be detained and charged.

“An operation may start out appearing to focus on a federal criminal immigration issue and may turn into a civil one over the course of that investigation,” Heintz said.

“There is a lot of nuance to it,” admitted Sullivan. He insists his department is not the long arm of federal law enforcement and is instead focused on crime, including guns, drugs, and human trafficking. However, if someone is caught in the act of crossing the border illegally, that constitutes a crime, and the chief said he calls for federal backup. Though he said that rarely happens.

“It’s a criminal violation to cross the border outside of a port of entry, and technically, we could take action on that. But again, we’re not here to enforce civil immigration while working Stonegarden,” Sullivan said.

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