Firefighter arrested by US border agents was on track for legal status, lawyers say
His arrest was illegal, the lawyers said, and violated Department of Homeland Security polices that say immigration enforcement must not be conducted at locations where emergency responses are happening.
He is one of two firefighters arrested this week while working the Bear Gulch fire in the Olympic national forest, which as of Friday had burned about 14 sq miles (36 sq km) and was only 13% contained, forcing evacuations.
US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement on Thursday that it had been helping the Bureau of Land Management with a criminal investigation into two contractors working at the fire when it discovered two firefighters who they said were in the country without permanent legal status.
The firefighter, whose name has not been made public, has lived in the US for 19 years after arriving with his family at the age of four. He received a U-visa certification from the US attorney’s office in Oregon in 2017 and submitted his U-visa application with US Citizenship and Immigration Services the following year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/30/us-border-agents-oregon-firefighters
= new reply since forum marked as read
to do the right thing. They don't care.
Doctor's offices, farms, schools, car washes. Detaining people who are doing jobs that Americans will not do. (Now they say if you're illegally here thats all it takes.... they are not looking for hardened criminals or murderers or rapists... just illegal ALIENS)
They are detaining citizens. They don't care.
They are terrorists and that's their job.
I took this picture at the first No Kings protest in la:
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