Federal agents arrest fire crew members at Washington wildfire

Immigration agents arrested two Mexican entrepreneurs helping to fight forest fire in the Olympic national forest in Washington, a supervisor said on Thursday that supervises crews.

It was one of the first times that federal immigration agents have been known to enter a fire zone to carry out the mass expulsion orders of President Donald Trump, the veteran firefighters said.

On Wednesday, two work teams, totaling 44 people, were gathered on a staging site near Lake Cushman around 9 a.m. when federal agents appeared, said the boss of the crew David Diaz.

They were only about a mile from the Bear Gulch fire line and planned to spend the day cutting wood, said Diaz.

The cause of the fire, which started on July 6, is still under investigation. He burned nearly 9,000 acres and was contained 13% Thursday evening, according to the incident command team.

Twenty of the contractual workers were Mexican and all carried work visas and passports, he said. But federal officials have arrested two of them suspected of illegally in the United States.

Governor Bob Ferguson said in a press release on social networks that he was “deeply concerned about this situation with two individuals helping to fight fires in Washington.”

Diaz immediately recognized one of the black trucks he had seen the previous week in Walmart, where his crew went to get supplies after his arrival in Washington, he said. The truck followed him in a hardware store and then in a gas station, he said.

“We saw the black truck literally make a U-turn right in front of us while we are at the store.” He said. “We have just followed all the time.”

Videos recorded by Diaz and published on social networks seemed to show the agents of the border patrol holding two crew members. Other videos show that crew members have lined up side by side in front of the agents of the border patrol.

Customs and the protection of American borders said in a statement that the arrests followed a criminal investigation into the two contracting companies, Table Rock Forestry Inc., based in Oregon, and Aside Arden Solutions Inc., the Bureau of Land Management, which conducted the investigation, did not immediately respond to a request for comments, and CBP did not provide details.

Companies have also not responded to requests for comments.

BLM, which oversees 245 million acres of federal land, asked for help from the American border patrol to verify the identity of all members of the work team, said immigration officials. One of the two who were arrested had a previous dismissal order on his file, they said.

Contracts with the two fire fighting companies have been terminated, according to customs and border protection.

“The termination and application measures of the contract did not interfere with fire -fighting operations or the response to active fires in the region, or has not imposed a danger for the surrounding community,” the agency said in its press release.

The action of application left a sour feeling among the members of the crew, said Diaz. They were not allowed to say goodbye to the two men who were arrested, and they were forced to stand for about three hours while the federal agents checked their files.

Diaz said everything he could do was put one of the men detained a mango cream soda.

“With private entrepreneurs, it is difficult for us to get out of a fire sometimes. I mean, we are lucky if we even get this kind of work,” he said, adding that once a crew member is expelled, it is impossible to recover it.

“There is already a lack of resources,” he continued. “Forest fires could become uncontrollable, larger than what anyone expects.”

Washington and Oregon are counting more and more on contractual teams like Diaz due to a shortage of federal firefighters. Unlike California, which invests massively in a multi-aging approach which includes state, local and federal resources, the Pacific Northwest contracts private companies to fill out slots open to firefighters.

The situation leaves more room for error, said Steve Gutierrez, a union representative of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

“This would not happen with forestry service,” he said, which requires strict checks of history, including citizenship status.

The fact that this happened during an active fire, he said, was particularly worrying. Immigration implementation measures generally do not occur near fire lines, said Diaz and Gutierrez, and Wednesday could mark a new chapter in the way Trump administration manages natural disasters.

Trump has canceled this year a Biden era policy prohibiting the application of immigration in so -called sensitive places such as schools and churches. This was also applied to natural disasters, but he seems to have changed with arrests on Wednesday.

“This is the first time that this has happened during my 26th birthday” in the fight against fires, said Diaz. “They could have done it more humanly.”