Vermont
Trucker’s brief detour into Canada leads to 3 weeks in federal custody – VTDigger
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.
This story by Liberty Darr was first published in The Other Paper on June 4, 2026.
As the conversation around digital data centers stirs strong emotions across the entire country, Vermont and some of its municipalities, including South Burlington, have hopped onto the conversation to get at least a bit of a handle on the rapidly evolving industry.
That’s at least the initial approach South Burlington is taking. The city’s planning commission has outlined some initial land use regulations related to the topic for a routine set of zoning amendments that are up for a public hearing later this month.
The topic of data centers is just one small subset in the planned amendments, according to Paul Conner, the city’s director of planning and zoning.
“This is fast moving, but we didn’t want to be caught on our heels,” Conner told the planning commission last month.
Data centers have become a buzzword around the nation and have faced significant backlash in some places, as proposals for the giant facilities pop up around the country. Opponents argue not only about the surging energy and water consumption associated with them, but also their propulsion of the artificial intelligence industry.
“We sort of joke in the office, there’s no such thing as a planning emergency, but you know, this is getting close to something,” senior city planner Kelsey Peterson told the commission. “There’s stuff in Massachusetts, stuff in New Hampshire, like there’s interest in the general New England area.”
Massive centers like those being proposed in places like Texas and Utah don’t seem to be on the horizon for Vermont yet, Kerrick Johnson, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service, said in February testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure. He was commenting on H.727, an act relating to sustainable data center deployment.
In fact, Vermont is likely not the most ideal candidate for data center developers, who are looking for things like inexpensive energy, reliable grid performance and strong fiber network communications, along with an “expeditious, predictable permitting process,” Johnson said.
“Now, I’ll let you all decide how Vermont ranks in those categories,” he quipped.
According to a 2026 annual energy report from the Vermont Department of Public Service, the Northeast continues to have some of the highest electricity rates in the country, and Vermont prices have risen over the last two years more steadily than in some other northeastern states.
Johnson said the state currently has sufficient regulatory mechanisms to ensure protections for Vermont ratepayers but that they should be strengthened.
Massachusetts and Connecticut have passed legislation to incentivize data centers in the state to promote economic development.
And really, Johnson said, data centers of any size being built across the region could impact Vermonters in two ways: infrastructure costs of regional network service and wholesale power costs.
Vermont’s proposed legislation was vetoed by Gov. Phil Scott, who cited concerns over the possibility that the bill’s broader message extended far beyond just data centers and into areas the state depends on for many of its “best jobs.”
Like Johnson, Scott said the state already has substantial regulatory authority over the issue, through Act 250, Public Utility Commission oversight, environmental permitting requirements, energy siting rules and local zoning.
“The last thing Vermont should do is worsen our economic challenges by adding new and unnecessary regulatory systems,” he wrote.
Planning commissioners in South Burlington took a similar approach, noting that the definition of a data center is broad. While the proposal for amendments to the land use regulations now includes the city’s own definition of data centers, it also acknowledges data centers can exist in a variety of different ways and likely already do in the city and Chittenden County, for sectors such as the University of Vermont Medical Center or manufacturers.
In the proposed regulations, if a data center facility is 5,000 square feet or less, it wouldn’t fit the definition of a data center but instead would be considered “general commercial.”
The proposed regulations also differentiate between small- and large-scale facilities — above or below 20,000 square feet — and give different allowances for both. As the regulations stand now, small-scale facilities are permitted in only two zoning areas in the city: mixed industrial commercial and industrial.
Conner said the city will likely take a two-step approach to the conversation, with these initial amendments offering a stopgap until the city’s planning leaders and commissioners can further explore the topic. The city, he said, is not taking a firm stance yet.
Other municipalities have taken a completely different approach. According to reporting from the Valley News, voters in Royalton on Town Meeting Day approved a policy that would place a five-year moratorium on the construction of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency data centers.
The South Burlington Planning Commission will hold a public hearing for the slew of regulation amendments — which includes data center definitions — on June 23 at 7 p.m.
Powerball, Mega Millions jackpots: What to know in case you win
Here’s what to know in case you win the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot.
Just the FAQs, USA TODAY
The Vermont Lottery offers several draw games for those willing to make a bet to win big.
Those who want to play can enter the MegaBucks and Lucky for Life games as well as the national Powerball and Mega Millions games. Vermont also partners with New Hampshire and Maine for the Tri-State Lottery, which includes the Mega Bucks, Gimme 5 as well as the Pick 3 and Pick 4.
Drawings are held at regular days and times, check the end of this story to see the schedule.
Here’s a look at June 5, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Vermont Mega Millions numbers from June 5 drawing
13-30-50-52-66, Mega Ball: 02
Check Vermont Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Gimme 5 numbers from June 5 drawing
12-19-22-32-36
Check Gimme 5 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 3 numbers from June 5 drawing
Day: 0-5-2
Evening: 8-5-2
Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 4 numbers from June 5 drawing
Day: 3-2-5-8
Evening: 1-1-9-6
Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from June 5 drawing
06-38-51-54-55, Bonus: 05
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your lottery prize
For Vermont Lottery prizes up to $499, winners can claim their prize at any authorized Vermont Lottery retailer or at the Vermont Lottery Headquarters by presenting the signed winning ticket for validation. Prizes between $500 and $5,000 can be claimed at any M&T Bank location in Vermont during the Vermont Lottery Office’s business hours, which are 8a.m.-4p.m. Monday through Friday, except state holidays.
For prizes over $5,000, claims must be made in person at the Vermont Lottery headquarters. In addition to signing your ticket, you will need to bring a government-issued photo ID, and a completed claim form.
All prize claims must be submitted within one year of the drawing date. For more information on prize claims or to download a Vermont Lottery Claim Form, visit the Vermont Lottery’s FAQ page or contact their customer service line at (802) 479-5686.
Vermont Lottery Headquarters
1311 US Route 302, Suite 100
Barre, VT
05641
When are the Vermont Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 10:59 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 11 p.m. Tuesday and Friday.
- Gimme 5: 6:55 p.m. Monday through Friday.
- Lucky for Life: 10:38 p.m. daily.
- Pick 3 Day: 1:10 p.m. daily.
- Pick 4 Day: 1:10 p.m. daily.
- Pick 3 Evening: 6:55 p.m. daily.
- Pick 4 Evening: 6:55 p.m. daily.
- Megabucks: 7:59 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 11:15 p.m. daily
What is Vermont Lottery Second Chance?
Vermont’s 2nd Chance lottery lets players enter eligible non-winning instant scratch tickets into a drawing to win cash and/or other prizes. Players must register through the state’s official Lottery website or app. The drawings are held quarterly or are part of an additional promotion, and are done at Pollard Banknote Limited in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Vermont editor. You can send feedback using this form.
LONDONDERRY, Vt. – At a quick June 1 meeting, the Londonderry Selectboard heard from Trevor Powers, a member of the Londonderry Planning Commission, who discussed a few zoning bylaw proposals. Powers reported that members of the planning commission have been making revisions to the bylaws since July 2024, “with the valuable assistance of William Goodwin, zoning administrator.”
“Items that people of the town have been objecting to have been removed,” Powers continued, adding that clarifications have been made to sections that the state requires and therefore could not be removed. He reported that definitions have been added, and language of the bylaws themselves have been updated.
A summary of the changes can be found in the first two pages of the report, included with the eighth draft of the bylaws, which were approved by planning commission on April 27.
Some of the amendments to the bylaws were discussed by Powers. With input from the housing commission, the number of days that nonpaying guests can stay on a property have increased. The shopping plaza is allowed one large sign, and a smaller sign for each corresponding business. The boundary of the conservation district was raised to 2,000 feet.
The selectboard moved to approve and warn a public hearing for the proposed amendments to the bylaws on July 6, at 6 p.m., at the town office.
Town Administrator Aileen Tulloch announced that treasurer Tina Labeau has initiated tax sales. Tulloch also reported that Doings in Derry would like photograph submissions of the community to upload to the town website, and that the Chester Snowmobile Club sent a thank-you note to the town and will be hosting a community barbecue on June 7, in Chester.
Matthew Barlow from Turning Point of Windham County then spoke to the board about their peer recovery center. Barlow stated that they have a full center in Brattleboro, but the center understands that is not easily accessible to those in the greater Londonderry community. Turning Point is looking to spread awareness about their recovery services, and are seeking spaces in Londonderry or Townshend in which to set up and expand their resources.
Town Clerk Allison Marino moved to discuss the malfunctioning alarm system at the town office, and suggested switching the town’s provider. Currently, Countryside Alarms is servicing the building, but an issue with the alarms sounding has not been resolved in a year. Marino believed there were some redundancies in the system setup that could be eliminated and thought the town could get a cheaper and updated alarm service.
The board then moved to close the Prouty property to the public once construction on site begins.
The Londonderry Selectboard meets on the first and third Mondays of the month, at 6 p.m., at the town office and on Zoom.
