Vermont’s prisons hold immigration detainees under a contract with federal authorities, and for months, the attorneys trying to reach those detainees say the state has been quietly closing doors on them.
The Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, known as VAAP, has long served as the primary legal lifeline for immigration detainees held in Vermont facilities. Attorneys and volunteers with the organization used to walk directly into prisons, meet with detainees, and use their phones and computers to provide language interpretation. That access, according to VAAP Executive Director Jill Martin Diaz, changed significantly after Jon Murad became interim commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections last fall.
Since Murad took over, VAAP attorneys say the department has made their work markedly harder. Language barriers have gone unaddressed in meeting settings, and attorneys report a lack of adequate space to meet with clients. For people navigating complex immigration proceedings, often without any prior legal representation, those obstacles can be the difference between deportation and a fair hearing.
Murad disputes the characterization. He says he has simply enforced policies that existed before his tenure, arguing that his predecessor allowed practices that never should have been permitted under department rules.
That predecessor, former Commissioner Nick Deml, had in July agreed to give VAAP lawyers a designated biweekly meeting time and location inside the two prisons where most detainees are held: Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington and Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town. Deml did not respond to a request for comment.
The stakes of this dispute extend well beyond administrative procedure. Under the Trump administration’s accelerating deportation campaign, federal immigration authorities have been moving detainees rapidly across the country. People can be transferred out of Vermont before attorneys have any real chance to assess their cases or file protective paperwork. VAAP operates as the one organization that routinely enters Vermont prisons to meet with detainees, making its access to those facilities critical.
“I think it’s really important to capitalize on this opportunity that Vermont can be where we disrupt this arrest-to-deportation pipeline that is happening across this country,” said Hillary Rich, an attorney at the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Vermont prisons hold often more than a dozen immigration detainees at a time under a contract agreement with the federal government. Detainees can be placed in any Vermont facility, but the two South Burlington and St. Albans sites absorb the majority. Other organizations, like Migrant Justice, connect community members to legal resources, but none of them routinely provide the inside-the-facility legal presence that VAAP does.
The conflict has drawn attention from Vermont legislators focused on the state’s prison system. They responded by writing the Corrections Department a memo directing officials to develop a formal memorandum of understanding with VAAP. That agreement would be designed to guarantee cooperation between the organization and the department, establishing clear expectations for attorney access.
From a public health standpoint, the barriers VAAP is describing carry consequences that compound quickly. Immigration detention is already a documented source of physical and psychological harm. People held in detention facilities face elevated rates of anxiety, depression, and trauma. When legal representation becomes inaccessible, detainees lose not just a chance at a better legal outcome but also one of the few structured human connections available to them during a deeply isolating experience.
Language access sits at the core of this problem. Without interpretation support, detainees cannot meaningfully communicate with attorneys, understand their rights, or participate in their own defense. Cutting off the devices that VAAP used to facilitate that interpretation does not make detention more secure. It makes due process less possible.
Vermont has a narrow but real opportunity to operate differently from states where the deportation pipeline moves unimpeded. What happens in these two correctional facilities is not a minor administrative matter. It shapes whether people, many of whom are asylum seekers, receive any meaningful shot at protection under the law.
The Corrections Department and VAAP are not simply in a dispute about protocols. They are in a dispute about whether legal access is a right or a courtesy that administrators can revoke at will.
