No Kings Day Outside an ICE Law Enforcement Support Facility

June 14, 2025,Williston, Vermont

I chose to be alone. Others gathered at thousands of No Kings rallies on this Flag Day, Trump Military Parade Day. Alone with bees on clover blooming in mown grass. Alone with red-winged blackbirds and the gulls screeching between lulls in traffic. Alone in a lawn chair from Walmart with my sign: “Ice Out! Gramma says.” Across the street from the ICE Center. On a sidewalk. 

No signage identifies this large ICE facility. Nothing says government except regularly-spaced bollards protecting the front, a gated parking lot, a listless flag draped on a pole. No other building in this small Vermont town has dozens of windows, all mirrored, so no one can look in. I can’t see cameras from my chair, but I know they are there. Harvest Lane isn’t the busiest thoroughfare in town, but it’s a direct route between the grocery store, Home Depot, Goodwill, and Lumber Liquidators. In the two hours I’m there, several hundred cars go by. 

After forty-five minutes I discover most every driver waves back at me if I wave at them. Those who approve my sign honk. One man gives me the finger. One yells that ICE is just enforcing American immigration laws. One aims his fingers like a gun and shoots.

Why was I there? I don’t want my small town to forget we host ICE here. Employees in this magnificent building develop targets, investigate and maintain national records, report to law enforcement. When ICE grabs workers in dairy farms, landscape and construction workers, and Palestinian activists, the names flow through this building. Honk at me; finger shoot me; don’t forget.