Gay U.S. Citizen Detained After Nicaragua Trip
Vermont superintendent Wilmer Chavarria says CBP officers seized his devices and questioned him for hours after a family trip to Nicaragua.
On July 21, Wilmer Chavarria, superintendent of Vermont’s Winooski School District, was detained for hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport after returning from a family visit to Nicaragua with his husband, Essex High School teacher Cyrus Dudgeon.
Officers seized Chavarria’s phone and computer, separated him from Dudgeon, and interrogated him for at least five hours about his marriage and his job, according to Vermont’s alternative weekly Seven Days.
During the interrogation, agents questioned whether Chavarria and Dudgeon were really married and repeatedly asked if Chavarria was actually a school superintendent. In an email to school board members, Chavarria described the experience as “abusive interrogation” and said he was “treated in a manner that is deeply disturbing and unacceptable.”
Chavarria said officers told him he had no right to legal counsel and moved him between four different rooms during the questioning. At one point, four agents interrogated him at once. He described the ordeal as “nothing short of surreal and the definition of psychological terror.”
“[The agents] falsely stated that I, a U.S. citizen, have no Constitutional rights at a point of entry, and officers became increasingly agitated as I continued to assert my rights regardless,” Chavarria wrote in the email to school board members.
He told Burlington CBS affiliate WCAX that agents attempted to access his computer, which contains sensitive student data, but he refused to provide his passwords. “I continued to ask for a lawyer, at least to ask the district lawyer to give me the go-ahead to provide that information, and they continued to refuse,” he said.
Chavarria was eventually released and reunited with Dudgeon. As the couple boarded their flight back to Vermont on July 22, Chavarria received an email from CBP stating that his Global Entry status had been revoked, with no explanation given.
As a result, going forward, Chavarria and his husband will be under extra surveillance whenever they attempt to travel internationally.
Reflecting on the incident, Chavarria said that as an experienced traveler, he had never faced such treatment, even when he was on a student visa before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2018. “You think it’s less likely to happen when you’re a full U.S. citizen,” he told Seven Days. “That’s why I was so shaken by the whole thing.”
Immigration enforcement under former President Donald Trump has been criticized for its sweeping treatment of people suspected of entering the country illegally. Trump’s former “border czar,” Tom Homan, has even admitted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made “collateral arrests” of U.S. citizens in “many” instances.
“Rights are being violated for U.S. citizens,” Chavarria said. “And that’s going to continue to happen and get worse if people don’t mobilize quickly enough.”
In response to questions from WCAX about why Chavarria had been detained, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it “follows strict policies and directives when it comes to searching electronic media. These searches are rare, highly regulated, and have been used in identifying and combating serious crimes, including terrorism, smuggling, human trafficking, and visa fraud.” The agency did not say why Chavarria was singled out.
The Winooski School District Board of Trustees condemned Chavarria’s detention, calling him an “exemplary leader and a beloved member” of the community and describing CBP’s actions as “deeply disturbing and unacceptable.”
“While we are aware that such detentions are increasingly becoming more common across the country, we must be clear: this is not normal. It is wrong. It is inhumane. It is unjust,” the board said in its statement.
“The Winooski School Board calls upon all Vermonters — and all Americans — to stand in solidarity with Superintendent Chavarria and his family. We urge our elected leaders and federal agencies to investigate this incident and take meaningful steps to prevent such abuses from continuing. No one — especially not a U.S. citizen — should face such treatment at the hands of their government.”
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