I grew up in northern Vermont. There are a lot of people who simply don’t know anything about what happens in the world - Vermont is very much like The Shire that way. The internet is unreliable and I grew up on DSL on copper lines from 1920, so FM radio is incredibly popular. Same with satellite TV. There’s also a massive drug problem and large-scale unemployment, because Vermont (without me passing judgment here) is fairly anti-industry and doesn’t have a lot of economic opportunities, especially up north in more rural areas like the NEK.

When all you have is people on the radio telling you the opiods ravaging your town are being smuggled from Canada and maybe 200 people in your town total who all listen to the same radio station, it’s really easy to believe whatever you’re told. It’s just ignorance, not of the willful kind but the naive kind. VT is the second whitest state in the union and people will frequently literally almost never meet a black person, and so racism can be a real problem just out of pure naivity.

Vermont is, in many ways, the land that time left behind in the 40s and they’re kind of only considered progressive because of UVM/Burlington and because they love weed, lol.

I do love aspects of Vermonters’ heartiness and sense of community, but it has real downsides as well. /rant

Fox news was playing up illegal immigration (remember the caravan?), and people are susceptible to propaganda.

From the article, the claim is worry about drugs from Canada.

A young man living at one trailer we visited, who was granted anonymity to protect himself and his job, fit the profile: After a few more years working on a vast maple operation — where he said he often put in 70 hours a week — he said he planned to return to his hometown in Mexico. He said he arrived a few weeks after the April raid, having flown into Rhode Island last year for a seasonal job in Newport. He then relocated first to New Hampshire and then to Vermont, pursuing rumors of work.

Not all immigrants hop the border wall.