Defying the crackdown: How Winooski schools became a sanctuary

The Trump administration is holding school funds hostage to force districts to assist deportation raids.

In Winooski, Vermont, superintendent Wilmer Chavarria refuses to share student data with immigration agents. He refuses to sign federal compliance documents. The administration has not yet issued a direct threat to cut Title I payments, but local leadership is preparing for the possibility as a calculated response to federal posturing. Chavarria views the threat of losing the 6 percent of the annual budget supplied by federal funding not as a reason to comply, but as a test of institutional values. The administration could take the funds.

The district’s policy, which formalizes that staff will not share student data with immigration officials and restricts agent access to campus without a judicial warrant, is the result of years of demographic shifts. As a federal refugee resettlement community for three decades, Winooski serves students fleeing conflict across the globe. Nearly 60 percent of students are people of color and more than a third are English learners. Chavarria, a naturalized citizen born in Nicaragua who learned English as a teenager after arriving in the United States, brings a personal understanding of the language and security barriers these students face. His leadership has galvanized the staff, who have volunteered as temporary guardians for students whose families fear detention.

The Trump administration reduced the national refugee admissions cap to 7,500. ICE agents detained a second-grader and his mother in November. The family was forced to self-deport after seven weeks.

The administration’s stated legal justification for this posture rests on a strict statutory reading that federal immigration law preempts municipal sanctuary statutes. This framing presents the withholding of funds as a routine precondition for educational grants. The actual mechanism is interagency coercion. The administration uses budgetary leverage to replicate an enforcement apparatus without the constraints of a judicial warrant requirement, a probable-cause standard, or any judicial oversight. Under an October 2025 policy reversal, the federal government ceased federal oversight of local law enforcement for constitutional compliance. Local districts now face the raw discretion of the executive branch. The administration’s budgetary threat replicates the consequences of a successful enforcement action without requiring an agent to cross the legal threshold of reasonable suspicion.

The stakes were realized in December when the district became an epicenter of hate following the hoisting of the Somali flag, a supportive gesture after Donald Trump used racialized language to describe the community during a cabinet meeting. While rightwing viral attacks led to death threats and the shuttering of school communications—staff temporarily took down the district’s website and unplugged school phones—the district refused to lower the flag. The doors separating hallways now require a staff member to open them. The district has distributed translated documents teaching families how to organize their records and speak to children about federal encounters.

The legal architecture around this standoff is fixed by the Supreme Court. Federal officers cannot be sued for the damages that normally check executive overreach. In Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120 (2017), and Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022), the Court severely restricted the implied civil damages remedy available against federal officers. This jurisprudence creates a litigation vacuum exactly for families like the Winooski second-grader and his mother, foreclosing the kind of lawsuit that would force a court to review the administration’s enforcement posture. District officials operate within a structural regime in which the threat of funding withdrawal replaces the threat of litigation.

Vermont’s legislature responded by passing a state statute in May that codified Winooski’s protocols into state law, a legislative pattern other states have adopted as the federal envelope tightened. The signal was unmistakable: the protection of these students is a necessity, not a negotiating position.

The regime functions at the intersection of budgetary leverage and judicial abdication. The judicial branch insulates the executive. The executive leverages the budget. Local school districts are left to absorb the structural friction.