{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.welch.senate.gov/welch-welcomes-winooski-school-district-superintendent-chavarria-to-bicameral-forum-on-trumps-detention-of-u-s-citizens/", "Welch Welcomes Winooski School District Superintendent Chavarria to Bicameral Forum on Trump\u2019s Detention of U.S. Citizens", "2025-12-10", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "VT", "Peter Welch", "W000800", "www.welch.senate.gov", "welch", "https://www.welch.senate.gov/category/press-release/page/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, this week introduced Vermont\u2019s Wilmer Chavarria, Superintendent of the Winooski School District, during a bicameral forum focused on the Trump Administration\u2019s cruel and inhumane mass deportation campaign. At the forum, Senator Welch expressed outrage against the Trump Administration\u2019s unconstitutional, arbitrary, and cruel immigration policies and highlighted how these policies are impacting Vermont.\n\n\u201cYou know, so many of the people here just show how wonderful new Americans are, wherever it is they come from. This indiscriminate round-up of people\u2014because who knows why, it\u2019s all arbitrary\u2014is what this hearing is about today. So, we\u2019re very proud to have a Vermonter with us today,\u201d said Senator Welch.\n\nSenator Welch\u2019s introduction and exchange with Superintendent Chavarria focused on his experience with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the agency\u2019s detention of a second grader in Chavarria\u2019s school district who was placed in immigration detention in Texas while traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday:\n\n\u201cI think the American people don\u2019t understand or don\u2019t see what you\u2019ve experienced. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s so important that you\u2019re here, because people don\u2019t want that to happen. And if it happens to somebody they know\u2014if it happens in their neighborhood and it\u2019s visible\u2014I think the American people are pretty good people. And each of you has had such an honorable life and has gone through such a horrible experience\u2014and that feeling of the power of the State taking you away and you being invisible and having no idea whether you\u2019re going to get out and in the physical jeopardy that you were in,\u201d said Senator Welch. \u201cTelling your story so that the American people can see that what we\u2019re not talking about is an open border; what we\u2019re not talking about is criminals, who all of us want to be protected from; we\u2019re talking about hard working people who have families, who have careers, who have aspirations, and who deeply, deeply believe in the American dream\u2026I want to thank you for coming here and sharing your story, not just because you want to tell it to us but because it\u2019s really important for the American people to hear it.\u201d\n\nWatch Senator Welch\u2019s full remarks below:\n\nView a photo of Senator Welch and Wilmer Chavarria here:\n\nIn his opening remarks, Superintendent Chavarria recalled his experience being detained by CBP at an airport in Houston, Texas, after returning home from visiting family in Nicaragua: \u201cSince this incident, I do not feel free to travel. I am fearful that a visit to my mother could mean extended detention or a fabricated plot to destroy my life\u2014like they threatened to. If the goal is to make some citizens feel like they are of a second class with only some of the rights, but not others, then they have succeeded. But I choose to believe that the pendulum will swing the other way, and that our collective disgust for these abuses will catalyze into a powerful backlash against overreach. I thank you for being here to support me and my fellow Americans as we ride out a dark time in our history.\u201d\n\nThe bicameral forum follows the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s (DHS) refusal to respond to multiple requests from members of these committees for information on the number of U.S. citizens who have been detained by CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The forum was hosted by members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.\n\nThe forum was led by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA-42) and attended by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC-AL), Ro Khanna (D-CA-17), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30), Melanie Stansbury (D-NM-01), Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA-10), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ-03), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12), and Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12).\n\nLawmakers heard testimony from five U.S. citizens who have been assaulted, detained, and denied constitutional rights by DHS agents, including Superintendent Chavarria; Dayanne Figueroa, a paralegal from Illinois; Javier Ramirez, a father from California; George Retes, a disabled U.S. Army veteran from California; and Andrea Velez, a marketing designer from California. The lawmakers also heard testimony from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council.\n\nWatch a livestream of the spotlight forum here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.welch.senate.gov/welch-welcomes-winooski-school-district-superintendent-chavarria-to-bicameral-forum-on-trumps-detention-of-u-s-citizens/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.1551926620304585, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}