Vermont
Seven Can’t-Miss Vermont Events This Week: July 9-16, 2025 | Seven Days
Drive It Home
Sunday 13
We’re not fangirling — you are! Spruce Peak Unplugged presents Jakob Dylan-led rock band the Wallflowers at the Spruce Peak Village Green in Stowe. For more than three decades, the group’s timeless tunes have dominated radio airwaves with early successes such as “One Headlight” and “6th Avenue Heartache,” yet its musical style continues to evolve and move forward — like a rolling stone, one might say.
Far Out and About
Ongoing
Shelter Cultivation Project founder Shawn Dumont’s “Peace Signs of Vermont” exhibit brings his back-road sightings to Burlington’s Karma Bird House Gallery. Along with his two young children, Dumont spent a year crisscrossing Green Mountain landscapes in search of these icons of hope — small reminders of humanity’s enduring pursuit of goodwill. Make your own sign at a free screen-printing workshop by Iskra Print Collaborative at the opening reception on July 10.
Well Done
Thursday 10
Outbound Stowe has the meats! Epicureans come hungry and leave satisfied at Smoke Signals: A Night With Chef Hugh Mangum, which serves up a succulent array of grilled grub. The barbecue legend hauls in his 1,000-gallon smoker for the almost-too-hot-to-handle feast, backed by WhistlePig cocktails, friendly lawn games and groovy tunes under the stars.
Art of Gold
Friday 11 & Saturday 12
As Petula Clark once told us, there’s no finer place, for sure, than downtown — especially when said downtown hosts the Waterbury Arts Fest. The annual craft-tastic jubilee transforms the town into a giant, wall-less art gallery with more than 100 exhibitors, as well as a hoppin’ street fair, live music by beloved area entertainers and gourmet bites by local purveyors.
Mental Health Day
Saturday 12
Psychiatric survivors, folks dubbed “mentally ill” and their allies take to the streets for Vermont Mad Pride in Burlington. A vibrant march through the Queen City brings activists to Battery Park, where a packed program of speeches, spoken-word poetry and music affirms a full spectrum of identities, while also shedding societally imposed shame.
American Pickers
Saturday 12
A scentsational summer day awaits gleeful guests at Sunshine Village Lavender Farm’s “You-Pick” Lavender Fest in Pittsford. Sun-speckled frolickers roam fields of purple to craft fresh, aromatic bouqs to take home. Walking farm tours, plant-focused workshops, food truck offerings and herbaceous handmade products complete the theme.
Wet Ones
Saturday 12
Attendees and storytellers assemble at St. Albans Bay Park for Tales From the Watershed, an evening of ecology-focused community building. Preregister to share a personal anecdote about Green Mountain waterways: Think childhood memories on Lake Champlain, a close encounter with water-loving wildlife, or a moment that shaped a forever bond with local lakes and rivers.
Arnaldo Gregorio Alay Aguilar was following his navigation system while delivering a truckload of logs to New York and ended up at Vermont’s Highgate Springs border crossing into Canada.
Canadian officers would not let him back up the truck for safety reasons, his lawyers say. So he was forced to cross through, make a U-turn and report to a border official on the U.S. side.
That detour led to the 40-year-old trucker being held in federal custody for three weeks. But the government did not make a case for why, according to court documents.
The situation has similarities to a pattern that emerged in recent immigration operations in Burlington and South Burlington, where government lawyers failed to provide evidence when seeking to hold people picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered Alay Aguilar’s immediate release last week “given the nature of the constitutional violations in this case,” according to the court order.
Federal officials “failed to provide Petitioner with a charging document or to articulate a clear or legally sufficient basis for his detention,” his lawyers stated in court filings.
In his order, Crawford noted that the government had offered no justification except a reinterpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act as it applies to people who originally entered the U.S. without authorization and have been living in the country. Alay Aguilar has a pending asylum application from October 2025.
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Federal lawyers argued that a person in his situation is subject to mandatory detention and not entitled to a bond hearing, at which an immigration judge would consider whether the person is a flight risk or a danger to the community.
That reinterpretation, Crawford determined, was wrong.
Amid the Trump administration’s continued crackdown on immigration, federal judges in Vermont this year have issued a string of rebukes to ICE for violating people’s constitutional rights while detaining them.
Nathan Virag, one of the lawyers who represented Alay Aguilar in federal court in Burlington, said the government had no grounds for holding his client.
“This is a person who did not try to leave the United States. It was an inadvertent reroute that should not count as a departure from the United States,” Virag told VTDigger. Virag is a lawyer with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont.
Co-counsel Erin Jacobsen, a lawyer with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, said the hearing March 25 was brief and featured “very little argument by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
Spokespeople for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions via email about the case.
Alay Aguilar’s description of what happened when he reached the Canadian border March 5 is contained in the habeas corpus petition filed in U.S. District Court on March 23, the federal response filed March 24 and the judge’s order filed March 25.
A citizen of Ecuador, Alay Aguilar lives in North Carolina and had applied for asylum in October 2025, according to court filings. That case is pending.
A long-haul truck driver with a valid commercial driver’s license, he recently took up an extra gig — to haul timber from Vermont to New York — to pay for an immigration lawyer for an upcoming asylum-related hearing, according to his lawyers’ petition.
Alay Aguilar inadvertently crossed into Canada at Highgate Springs, one of the busiest border crossings in New England, while following directions on the truck’s navigation system, the petition said.
Canadian border personnel, who communicated with Alay Aguilar in Spanish, would not let him reverse the truck for safety reasons.
When Alay Aguilar tried to reenter the U.S., a Customs and Border Protection official gestured for him to exit the truck and walk into a building, which he did.
In the building, Alay Aguilar was allowed to communicate using Google translator on his phone. Officials said there was a problem with the truck’s manifest and ordered him to call the owner, which he did. CBP officials then spoke with the owner in English and did not translate the conversation, court documents state.
Officials then confiscated his phone and handed it to an ICE official. ICE personnel then handcuffed Alay Aguilar and drove him to an office about 15 minutes away where he was detained for about three hours, according to court documents, before being moved to Northwest State Correctional Facility and held there.
Court filings indicate Alay Aguilar fled Ecuador and entered the United States around November 2023. He was detained by the Department of Homeland Security near the Mexican border and held for a few weeks, after which he accepted the government’s offer to fly him to New York so he could pursue asylum outside of detention, his lawyers said in their petition.
He relocated to Charlotte, N.C., and applied for asylum. He received work authorization and is currently employed by a local company in North Carolina. He has lived and worked in North Carolina for two years, where he has friends and a serious girlfriend, his lawyers said in court documents.
“There were no changed circumstances after his release on his own recognizance in 2023, no criminal history, so it really was an unconstitutional detention,” Virag said in an interview.
Cases arising out of accidental border crossings are based on Homeland Security officials “misinterpreting” decades-old rules meant to punish people making an initial entry into the United States or those who are a danger to the community and pose a flight risk, Virag said. Judge Crawford noted in his order that Alay Aguilar had not been found to present a danger or a flight risk.
“These detentions serve no legitimate government purpose or interest,” Virag said.
Similar border crossing detentions last year — involving Alexi and his family and Jose Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz and his stepdaughter, for instance — illustrate some of the tactics CBP have used on noncitizens amid detention quotas mandated by the Trump administration.
As for Alay Aguilar, his detention was one of “fear, confusion, isolation, and hopelessness,” his lawyers said in court filings.
“This case had a good outcome, but Mr. Alay Aguilar was subjected to 20 days of detention with absolutely no due process whatsoever — a completely unjustified, inexcusable, traumatizing abuse of power,” Jacobsen said.
“In many ways, Arnaldo’s case was like the other unconstitutional detentions we’ve seen, with our government arresting and detaining people outside of regular and constitutionally required procedures,” she added.
And his lawyers would not have known about his case were it not for the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project’s detention check program, she said. Under that program, lawyers and interpreters proactively visit the detention centers in Vermont. Alay Aguilar was found at the St. Albans prison during one such visit on March 18, she said.
Now that Alay Aguilar has been freed, he is back in North Carolina.
“He will be able to resume what he was doing before his apprehension — working, taking care of his family and continuing to pursue his asylum case,” Jacobsen said.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – The open house for a new medical office in Williston looked ordinary enough.
On a recent Friday evening, a smattering of prospective patients grazed on fruit and healthy snacks, peeked at the exam room, and chatted with the owner and staff members of Blue Spruce Health.
But the flyer announcing the event contained clues that this wasn’t your typical doctor’s office. It’s one of a growing number of practices in Vermont that deliver medical care through a relatively new model known as direct primary care.
Though similar in concept to a more commonly known version called “concierge medicine,” direct primary care touts cheaper care — fees typically top out at $200 a month — allowing doctors to see patients who are from a range of income levels rather than just high earners. It’s sometimes referred to as “blue-collar concierge.”
Darren Perron spoke with Seven Days’ Alison Novak, who reported on the new health care model in this week’s edition.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
Vermont’s barn preservation effort is getting a fresh coat of energy as the state opens applications for the 2026 Vermont Barn Painting Project.
The initiative offers reimbursement to farm families for painting and minor repairs that help maintain historic barns, according to a community announcement. Funding comes from the A. Pizzagalli Family Farm Fund, and ten barns will be selected for support this year.
The announcement notes that the program continues a long-running effort supported by Angelo Pizzagalli and the family fund. The fund has been involved in barn restoration work for years, evolving into the microgrant format now being used to help farm families manage the upkeep of large, aging structures.
Applications are open through April 30 and will be reviewed as they arrive, according to the announcement. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.
Interested barn owners may apply online or email Scott Waterman at Scott.Waterman@vermont.gov for more information.
This story was created by Dave DeMille, ddemille@gannett.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
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