Firefighter detained while working a fire in Washington State entered US at age 4

By GLENN THRUSH

A firefighter arrested by the Border Patrol last week while he was working at a wildfire in Washington state has lived in the United States since he was 4 and has a visa application pending, his lawyers said.

The names of the firefighter, who is 23, and a colleague who was detained at the same time have not been released. Both were charged with illegally entering the country, the Border Patrol said.

The case has attracted attention because of the circumstances of the arrests, with Border Patrol agents traveling into a fire zone to check the identities of crews fighting the 9,000-acre Bear Gulch Fire in the Olympic National Forest. The fire was 13% contained as of Sunday afternoon.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the people who were detained were not assigned to actively fight the fire but were in a support role cutting logs into firewood.

Jordan Cunnings, legal director at the Innovation Law Lab, which represents the 23-year-old, said he entered the United States 19 years ago, has worked as a firefighter for the past three years and lives in an Oregon suburb with his family.

The firefighter had been the victim of a federal crime and had cooperated with law enforcement’s investigation of the crime, Cunnings said, which qualified him to apply for a special type of visa for victims of criminal activity. He applied in 2018 and has been waiting for a decision from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services since then.

“Oregon is the only home he’s ever known,” Cunnings said.

She added, “This is just one of the more egregious and recent examples where the federal government is just targeting the most brave members of our community, who are literally risking their lives to protect all of us,” she said.

Both firefighters are being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to a statement from Rep. Emily Randall, a Democrat whose district includes the detention facility and the fire area.

Before President Donald Trump resumed office in January, the federal government had a policy not to conduct immigration enforcement at emergency response locations including wildfires. And federal immigration agents have sometimes assisted firefighters with evacuation efforts prompted by wildfires.

“Fire is a really serious issue in the Pacific Northwest, and we’re just hoping that we can vindicate his rights and get him back on the front line soon,” Cunnings said of her organization’s client.

The two detained firefighters worked for private firefighting contractors, the Border Patrol said in a statement Thursday. It said the Bureau of Land Management, which hired the contractors, had asked the Border Patrol to check the crews’ identities and status.

After the two firefighters were detained, the other 42 workers at the site were escorted out of the fire area. Border Patrol said contracts with the contractors have been canceled.

The Innovation Law Lab has called for its client’s immediate release and has claimed in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that he had been wrongfully arrested and charged.

The Border Patrol said Thursday that the arrests “did not interfere with firefighting operations or the response to any active fires in the area” or “pose any danger to the surrounding community.”

But some officials disagreed. Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, a Democrat, said he was “deeply concerned” that the Trump administration was targeting firefighters. Fifty Democratic members of Congress wrote to federal officials Friday expressing concern and seeking information about the arrests.

Randall said in a statement that she tried to visit the two firefighters at the detention facility Saturday under her authority as a member of Congress but was turned away.