Two firefighters battling Washington state’s biggest wildfire were arrested by Border Patrol agents in a move that officials have called “as immoral as it is sick.”
The men, who were reported to be Mexican contractors, were picked up Wednesday as they battled the Bear Gulch fire on the Olympic Peninsula. The blaze has so far burned about 14 square miles on the north side of Lake Cushman in the Olympic National Forest and National Park.
By Thursday evening the fire had covered 8,960 acres and was only 13 percent contained, having been burning since July 6. The state’s second biggest fire currently is the Pomas fire, which is 3,533 acres large as of three days ago.
Two work crews were gathered at a staging site near Lake Cushman around 9 a.m. Wednesday when federal agents appeared, crew boss David Diaz told NBC News. Videos recorded by crew members appeared to show the agents detaining the men, who were put into handcuffs.
The outlet reported that 20 of the contract workers were Mexican and all carried work visas and passports. The officials arrested the two men on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally but this was not immediately confirmed.
The Independent has contacted USCBP for further information about the alleged arrests.
Veteran firefighters told NBC that the incident was one of the first times Border Patrol agents have entered a fire zone to carry out mass deportation orders given by the Trump administration.
In a statement released Thursday, Washington Senator Patty Murray described Trump’s immigration policy as “fundamentally sick.”
“Trump has undercut our wildland firefighting abilities in more ways than one—from decimating the Forest Service and pushing out thousands of critical support staff, to now apparently detaining firefighters on the job," Murray said.
“This administration’s immigration policy is fundamentally sick. Trump has wrongfully detained everyone from lawful green card holders to American citizens—no one should assume this was necessary or appropriate.
The statement continued: “Here in the Pacific Northwest, wildfires can, and have, burned entire towns to the ground. We count on our brave firefighters, who put their lives on the line, to keep our communities safe—this new Republican policy to detain firefighters on the job is as immoral as it is dangerous.
Murray said she was demanding “immediate answers” from the administration about the circumstances of the reported arrests, including the whereabouts of the two firefighters and what the government’s policy was regarding immigration enforcement during active wildfires.
Jennifer Risdal, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service's Incident Management Team overseeing the firefighting efforts, previously said the service was aware of the Border Patrol activities at the fire site but offered no information about what happened.
"The Border Patrol operation is not interfering with firefighting activity and Bear Gulch firefighters continue to make progress on the fire," Risdal told The Associated Press in an email.
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