Donald Trump’s immigration blitz has reportedly extended to firefighters going about their jobs tackling a wildfire blaze.
Immigration officials sparked outrage after swooping in on the site of Washington State’s largest wildfire and arresting two people identified as firefighters battling the blaze, according to reports.
Fire bosses overseeing the Bear Gulch inferno in the Olympic National Forest, just west of Seattle, confirmed in a terse evening statement that they were “aware of a Border Patrol operation” at the scene.
Two people on private hand crews were held on Wednesday after U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived mid-morning and ordered workers trying to quell Washington’s Bear Gulch blaze to line up for ID checks, according to The Seattle Times.
The paper said firefighters in gear could be seen sitting on logs in front of federal officers and a marked U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle, and that at least one firefighter was being handcuffed.
One crew member told The Seattle Times that a federal officer had barked at them, “You need to get the (expletive) out of here. I’m gonna make you leave.”
Another said they had been warned not to film. “You risked your life out here to save the community,” the firefighter said. “This is how they treat us.”
The arrests were made at a site where two crews were ready to cut wood for nearby residents while awaiting a supervisor.
The fire’s Incident Management Team (IMT) told the Daily Beast the enforcement action did not interfere with suppression work.
The IMT did, though, confirm that it was “aware of a Border Patrol operation on the fire,” and referred inquiries to the Port Angeles Border Patrol station.
The Beast contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ask whether ICE had conducted the raid on firefighters during a wildfire, and how the department felt such arrests served the U.S. people and nation.
A senior DHS official responded to our request with the following statement: “The two illegal aliens apprehended were NOT firefighters. The two contracted work crews questioned on the day of their arrests were not even assigned to actively fight the fire; they were there in a support role, cutting logs into firewood. The firefighting response remained uninterrupted the entire time. No active firefighters were even questioned, and U.S. Border Patrol’s actions did not prevent or interfere with any personnel actively engaged in firefighting efforts. The mainstream media is once again spreading fake news about federal law enforcement efforts.”
The Seattle Times reported that Biden-era guidance agents must not carry out operations at disaster sites without “exigent circumstances,” though it is unclear whether that protection remains, while federal officials have pressed more aggressive immigration enforcement under President Trump.
The incident is the latest in a string of aggressive ICE actions that have alarmed communities and disrupted essential institutions, after the Trump team ordered ICE to “turbocharge” arrests days after he came to power in January, and even scrapped a rule shielding churches, hospitals, and schools from enforcement.
The move has outraged even some of Trump’s biggest supporters, including podcaster Joe Rogan. “It’s insane,” Rogan said on his podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, in early July.
“The targeting of migrant workers—not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that.”
Wednesday’s confrontation unfolded as more than 400 personnel fought Washington’s largest active wildfire, which has been burning since early July. By Wednesday morning, Bear Gulch had scorched nearly 9,000 acres and was 13 percent contained, with six 20-person hand crews—five of them private contractors—on the line.
The Beast has approached the Border Patrol station in Port Angeles, and the Bear Gulch IMT for comment.
