Federal immigration agents did not apprehend the man they were searching for during an operation that kicked off a chaotic, all-day standoff with protesters on busy Dorset Street in South Burlington, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, heavily armed federal agents broke down the home’s front door after waiting hours to secure a criminal arrest warrant for a Mexican man named Deyvi Daniel Corona-Sanchez. The 24-year-old man is accused of illegally returning to the United States after being deported and is facing a pending driving-under-the-influence charge from January in Middlebury.
But after about 20 minutes inside the home, agents came out with three people, none of whom were Corona-Sanchez. A 3-year-old child had been removed from the home earlier in the day, before agents forced their way in.
The ordeal, which represents the first major clash between protesters and federal immigration agents in Vermont, appears to have been based on faulty surveillance that resulted in the violent arrest of three people unrelated to the initial enforcement operation.
The three detained include two women, Camila Patin-Patin, 20, and Jissela Patin-Patin, 31, and one man, Christian Humberto Jerez-Andrade, 31. All are currently being held in Vermont correctional facilities. None have been charged with a crime.
Both women are from Ecuador and have applied for asylum in the United States, according to Rachel Elliott, an organizer with local advocacy group Migrant Justice. Jerez-Andrade is from Honduras. Elliott declined to share more information about his immigration status.
Wednesday’s events began around 7:30 a.m. when Colton Riley, an ICE deportation officer based in St. Albans, was “conducting surveillance” on a Dorset Street home and he saw two men get into a Toyota Camry, according to an affidavit he wrote. Riley ran the plates for the Camry and found it was registered to Corona-Sanchez.
The man who got into the driver’s seat looked like a photograph Riley had “reviewed” from “a prior immigration interaction,” leading him to “believe that [Sanchez] is the person who entered the front driver’s seat,” according to the affidavit.
But that appears not to have been the case.
“He was never present on the scene or the driver of the vehicle at the time of the accident,” Elliott said of Corona-Sanchez. “He was not there for any of this. He was not in that house.”
Instead, Elliott says Corona-Sanchez was the previous owner of the vehicle. A teenage boy who is an American citizen was also in the car, Elliott said.
When Riley and other unmarked ICE vehicles attempted to pull over the Camry, the driver allegedly fled, leading to several crashes during the busy morning commute along Dorset Street. The two passengers then left their vehicle and fled into the home, which was eventually surrounded by agents and demonstrators who clashed throughout the day.
The teenage boy was inside the house when agents entered but was not detained.
Authorities are still looking for Corona-Sanchez, according to the federal press release. He is charged with illegal reentry after deportation.
At a press conference late Wednesday, South Burlington Police Chief William Breault criticized federal authorities for how they handled the operation. He disagreed with agents’ decision to try and arrest someone who was in a moving car on a busy road near the city’s high school around the time the school day began.
“When we got involved, this ball was already put in motion by some of their poor decision-making and planning,” Breault said.
The chief also said he urged his federal counterparts to reconsider trying to execute the warrant while hundreds of protesters were surrounding the home in an increasingly volatile situation.
“Given the size of the crowd and given the potential for additional safety concerns, there should have been potentially more thought given to, was taking this person into custody at this moment fully necessary? Or could that have been done through other investigative means?” he said.
Despite his misgivings, Breault said he felt his officers needed to be there to help ensure the safety of protesters and to allow the federal agents to serve their criminal warrant.
“Our local partners and the South Burlington Police Department simply ensured that people had the right to peacefully protest and that those federal agents could do their job safely,” Breault said.
Breault was joined at the press conference by interim Burlington Police Chief Shawn Burke and Capt. Michael Filipek of the Vermont State Police. Breault said he invited federal agencies to attend, but they declined.
