Lawyers for firefighter ask judge to order his release from ICE facility

The lawyers of an Oregon firefighter who were placed in police custody by agents of the American border patrol while fighting a forest fire from the state of Washington State submitted a request to the Federal Court asking a judge to order his liberation from an immigration detention center.

Oregon, Rigoberto Hernandez Hernandez, and another firefighter were part of a crew of 44 people fighting a fire in the Olympic national forest on August 27 when the agents placed them in police custody during a multi-aging criminal investigation into the two entrepreneurs for whom the men were employed.

Lawyers from the law laboratory innovation law declared during a press conference that his arrest was illegal and raped the American policies of the Department of Internal Security which say that the application of immigration should not be carried out in places where emergency responses occur.

The Fire Bear Gulch, one of the largest in the state, had burned 29 square miles (75 square kilometers) on Friday and was 9%contained.

The border patrol said at the time that the two workers were in the United States illegally to have been detained. Federal authorities have not provided information on the investigation into entrepreneurs.

Lawyer Rodrigo Fernandez-Torta said he had a petition for Habeas Corpus and a request for a temporary prohibition prescription which requires the release of the Northwest Ice Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.

Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, told an email to the Associated Press that the two men were not firefighters – they worked in a supporting role in cutting the newspapers in the firewood.

“The fire-fighting response has remained uninterrupted all the time,” she said. “The actions of the American border patrol have not prevented or interfered with an actively engaged personnel in fire fighting efforts.” A spokesperson for the Border Patrol refused to comment, saying that they do not comment on active or pending disputes.

After Hernandez was arrested in August, his lawyers could not locate him for 48 hours, which caused distress to his family, said Fernandez-Terga. Since then, he has been in the establishment of Tacoma, they have said.

Hernandez, 23, was the son of migrant agricultural workers, said his lawyer. He was raised in Oregon, Washington and California when they were traveling for work. He moved to Oregon three years ago and started working as a forest firefighter.

It was his third season working as a forest firefier, “doing the exhausting and dangerous work to reduce trees and clean the vegetation to manage the spread of forest fires and to protect houses, communities and resources,” said his lawyer.

Hernandez had received a U-Visa certification from the Oregon Prosecutor’s Office in 2017 and submitted his U-visa request to American citizenship and immigration services the following year. The U-visa program was created by the congress to protect victims of serious crimes that help federal investigators.

He has been waiting since the immigration agency since 2018 has been waiting for the immigration agency to decide on its request and should be free during the process, said its lawyers.