'Fishing expedition': How one Vermont traffic stop raises questions about racial profiling and illegal border crossings

[erronis]

https://vtdigger.org/2025/07/09/fishing-expedition-how-one-vermont-traffic-stop-raises-questions-about-racial-profiling-and-illegal-border-crossings/

As the cases of two detained immigrant advocates unfold, their experience illustrates tactics the federal government uses on non-citizens amid ballooning deportation quotas mandated by the Trump administration.

Eyes widening and darting. A stiffened body. Hands clenched on the steering wheel. No smile or wave. Plain clothing.

These are the observations Border Patrol Agent Brandon Parent made to justify pulling over a gray Ford Transit van on Route 105 in Richford on June 14. In an affidavit written by Parent’s colleague, Parent would later state that behind the driver and passenger, he believed he saw more people in the back seats through the van’s tinted windows. Those people would turn out not to exist.

The driver of the van, 29-year-old Jose Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz, was returning from delivering groceries at a farm near the border with Canada that Saturday morning, according to a declaration De La Cruz filed on July 6 in support of his bail proceedings. His stepdaughter, 18-year-old Heidi Perez, was in the passenger seat.

Both are from Mexico, but De La Cruz moved to Vermont in 2016 to establish his life as a dairy worker. Perez followed in 2023 and became a student at Milton High School, where she graduated a week earlier, according to court documents.

For more than three weeks since the traffic stop, both have been detained in Vermont jails by Immigration and Customs Enforcement awaiting deportation proceedings. In declarations filed this week, De La Cruz and Perez allege they were physically injured by Border Patrol agents, and that the agents threatened further harm if they did not cooperate.

Both are arguing to be released on bail, but their proceedings have been delayed.

As De La Cruz’s and Perez’s cases continue to unfold, their experience, illustrated largely through court documents, shows some of the tactics U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses on non-citizens amid ballooning deportation quotas mandated for the Department of Homeland Security by the Trump administration.

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