An anonymous group is spending real money to advertise fictional guided tours of Chittenden County’s very real DHS infrastructure. Seven Days says the tours are coming. The creators aren’t talking.

by Compass Vermont

UPDATE — March 10, 2026, 10:30 a.m.

After this article was published this morning, ICE Tours VT responded to Compass Vermont’s press inquiry. Brenda Patoine, a health communications professional in Chittenden County writing on behalf of the project, identified the creator as Blaine Paxton, a Chittenden County supply chain consultant. Paxton was quoted in the Williston Observer in connection with the Williston Selectboard’s January 2026 vote opposing ICE operations in the town.

Patoine described ICE Tours VT as a volunteer-run project that “merges performance art with political parody to deliver a serious and very real message about the presence of ICE and DHS in Vermont.” She said the inaugural bus tour “will launch very soon (with a real bus, yes), but the exact date is not being released due to safety and security concerns.”

Regarding the fabricated Seven Days article URL detailed below, Patoine said the group has “not seen” it and asked Compass Vermont to share it with them.

Patoine’s email arrived approximately two hours after publication. She indicated the group was “just seeing” the inquiry “for the first time,” despite Seven Days deputy publisher Cathy Resmer having provided the press@icetoursvt.com address to Compass Vermont the previous afternoon and indicating the group was “ready to respond to any inquiries.”

The original article appears in full below.

A slick new website called ICE Tours VT is inviting Vermonters to book guided bus tours of federal immigration enforcement facilities in Chittenden County. The pitch: “Think Hollywood star tours, but instead of celebrity mansions you get federal surveillance infrastructure. It’s a little strange, a little spooky, and entirely real!”

There’s just one problem. The tours don’t exist — at least not yet. There are no dates, no prices, no booking form, and no disclaimer identifying the project as satire. The site is a single static page with a logo, a cartoon bus, and a few paragraphs blending verifiable facts about ICE operations in Vermont with the fiction of a tourism experience. Someone is nonetheless spending real money to promote it — including a paid print ad in the March 4–11, 2026 issue of Seven Days. And as Compass Vermont investigated the project, a more troubling detail emerged: a URL formatted to look like a Seven Days news article about ICE Tours VT appears to have been fabricated by someone outside the paper.

The Facts Behind the Fiction

The site’s factual claims are largely grounded in documented reporting. The National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center (NCATC), at White Cap Business Park in Williston, is ICE’s proactive intelligence-gathering arm for the eastern United States — it investigated referrals on 4.6 million individuals in FY2023. In October 2025, WIRED reported that ICE planned to hire contractors there for around-the-clock social media surveillance across Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and other platforms.

The Law Enforcement Support Center, also in Williston, serves as ICE’s 24/7 contact point for roughly 13,000 law enforcement agencies worldwide. Additional DHS agencies — CBP, USCIS, TSA, Secret Service — maintain a county presence tied to Burlington’s proximity to the Canadian border.

The site claims DHS is Chittenden County’s “fifth largest employer” and counts “8 different DHS operations.” The employer ranking couldn’t be independently confirmed, but the facility count is plausible. A recurring theme in coverage of anti-ICE protests has been that most Vermonters had no idea this infrastructure existed. ICE Tours VT is built around precisely that element of surprise.

The Seven Days Ad: Who Paid for It?

The print ad appeared on page 3 of the March 4–11 issue — same logo, same cartoon bus, same pitch, plus a QR code and the tagline “Tour dates to be announced soon!!” It does not identify a sponsor beyond the ICE Tours VT name and website.

Seven Days deputy publisher Cathy Resmer told Compass Vermont that “the ad was purchased by ICE Tours VT, as indicated by the logo and URL on the ad.” She pointed to a contact page on the ICE Tours VT website listing an email address (info@icetoursvt.com). That contact page was not visible during Compass Vermont’s initial review of the site, suggesting it may have been added recently.

On the question of whether the ad promotes a real service, Resmer was direct: “ICE Tours VT has assured us that these tours will happen. We routinely allow advertisers to run provocative ads to generate awareness of a product or service before it’s available to the public.” She added: “Judging by the response, this ad appears to be working as intended.”

Seven Days’ advertising policy states the paper “reserves the right to ask an advertiser — or the organization behind the ad — to identify itself in print or online ads when the paper deems it appropriate” and does not accept ads that “make fraudulent claims.” Resmer’s response indicates the paper accepted ICE Tours VT’s assurance that the tours are forthcoming. Whether that assurance holds up remains to be seen.

The Fabricated Article URL

A URL circulated online pointing to what appeared to be a Seven Days article about ICE Tours VT: sevendaysvt.com/news/federal-agencies-as-tourist-attractions-a-new-vermont-bus-tour-maps-the-state-35327318. The link loads Seven Days’ own website but returns the paper’s branded error page: “Oops! That page can’t be found.”

Seven Days says it never existed. Editor Matthew Roy told Compass Vermont that “Seven Days has not published a news story about this.” Deputy publisher Resmer went further: “Seven Days has never published an article about ICE Tours VT in our newspaper or on our website. We have no record of any article with that URL.”

Resmer also provided a technical detail that points to fabrication. The URL ends with a numeric ID — 35327318 — which, she explained, matches the format used by Seven Days’ old content management system, called Foundation. Seven Days transitioned to a new CMS called Newspack in August 2025 and has not formatted URLs that way since.

That timeline is significant. ICE Tours VT did not exist before late 2025 at the earliest — the protest movement it draws on didn’t begin until October 2025. An article about ICE Tours VT could not have been created in the Foundation CMS before the August 2025 transition, because there was nothing to write about. And it couldn’t have been created in the new CMS in that format, because Newspack doesn’t generate URLs that way.

The most likely explanation is that someone — presumably connected to the ICE Tours VT project — constructed a URL designed to mimic a Seven Days article, using the paper’s old URL format, to create the appearance of legitimate media coverage. If so, it adds a layer of deliberate deception to a project that was already operating in a gray zone between satire and misinformation.

Who Is Behind It?

Nobody is saying. The ICE Tours VT website now includes a contact page with an email address, info@icetoursvt.com. Compass Vermont sent an inquiry to that address requesting comment and identifying information. It also sent an inquiry to press@icetoursvt.com. No response was received from either email.

The anonymity is consistent with documented fears of retaliation. Activists who dropped a banner at the Williston facility in January asked to remain anonymous for fear of federal reprisal. In February, reports emerged that DHS had sent hundreds of subpoenas to Google, Meta, and Reddit demanding identities of people who criticize ICE online. But the apparent fabrication of a Seven Days article URL suggests the anonymity may serve purposes beyond self-protection.

The Reaction Was Not What They Hoped

When the ad surfaced on the Vermont subreddit, the response was largely critical — and not from ICE supporters. Commenters called it “expensive trolling” and “baiting.” One user identified it immediately as “obviously an anti-ICE stunt” — to which another replied: “Apparently not as obvious as they thought it would be.”

Satire often works best when the audience is in on the joke. When the audience isn’t sure whether they’re being informed or deceived, the reaction tends to be something other than laughter.

Into this environment — where direct action has produced tangible results and real consequences — ICE Tours VT offers irony instead. Whether that’s a creative escalation or a misfire depends on who you ask.

The Bottom Line

The site’s underlying message — that most Vermonters are unaware their state hosts a sprawling federal surveillance apparatus — is legitimate, well-sourced, and supported by reporting from multiple news outlets, including Seven Days and Compass Vermont.

But wrapping that information in a deceptive package — no satire label, no identified creator, no way to distinguish it from a real business, and now the apparent fabrication of a fake news article URL — risks undermining trust when trust is already scarce.

Ice Tours VT may have set out to expose something real about Vermont. What it may have exposed instead is the limits of irony as activism — and the cost of deception in an environment where people are already struggling to tell what’s real.