Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials interfered with an active wildland firefighting campaign and arrested two men working to contain the Bear Gulch Fire in Washington. As reported by Reuters, the Aug. 27 raid resulted in two firefighters being detained at an ICE detention center in Tacoma, where federal officials refused to release the firefighters’ names.
The two men were employed by a company contracted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which requested Border Patrol assistance in verifying the identities of members of the companies’ work crews. The Reuters news story also cites a U.S. Customs and Border Protection statement indicating that BLM management subsequently terminated contracts with the firefighting companies.
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported that one of the firefighters, 23-year-old Oregon resident Rigoberto Hernandez, was released Sept. 24 without a court order. Attorneys had filed a habeas corpus petition demanding Hernandez’s release, and federal attorneys unexpectedly filed to dismiss the case almost a month after the firefighter was illegally detained. No news outlets have reported any information about the other detained firefighter.
Jordan Cunnings, legal director for Innovation Law Lab, told OPB, “Rigoberto was arrested solely because of his race and because he asserted his constitutional rights…. That’s patently unlawful…. The officers were joking about him based on his skin color … while he was handcuffed. The whole thing just really turns your stomach.”
Prior to Hernandez’ release, Alex Brown, reporting for Stateline, revealed that nearly a dozen firefighters and officials familiar with the incident, speaking on condition of anonymity, “shared their belief that the top officials assigned to the fire deployed the crews to a remote location under false pretenses” so that federal agents could check their immigration status.
“There’s really no way [the wildfire management team] could not have been involved,” Riva Duncan told Brown. Duncan is a former wildland fire chief who served more than 30 years with the Forest Service. “We’re all talking about it,” she said. “People are wondering if they go on a fire with this team, if that could happen to them.”
“This team” is California Interagency Incident Management Team 7. Brown’s news report indicates that widespread anger with the team has been expressed within the wildland firefighting community.
