US lawmakers furious as ICE arrests firefighters during park wildfire

When US Border Patrol agents arrested two firefighters at the height of the Bear Gulch Fire on the edge of Olympic National Park last month, it sparked widespread backlash over whether immigration enforcement had put public safety at risk.

Social media exploded with criticism over the arrests, and local lawmakers alarmed by the federal agents’ actions began strategizing on what to do next. In Thurston County, county Commissioner Wayne Fournier decided to spearhead a new ordinance that seeks to bar federal agencies from disrupting emergency crews and mandates clearer communication with response leaders.

“This isn’t about politics or immigration. This is about keeping emergency responders focused on saving lives and property,” Fournier, who had a 30-year career in fire services before turning to politics, told SFGATE. “We can’t have raids disrupting fire suppression efforts or emergency response efforts, because it doesn’t help bring things to an end and also wastes taxpayer money.”

The proposed ordinance, called the Emergency Responder Protection and Enforcement Coordination Act, hasn’t been made public, but a draft was provided to SFGATE for review.

It’s designed to safeguard emergency operations from outside disruption, ensuring that firefighting and disaster responses aren’t derailed by federal enforcement actions, to protect all responders’ due process rights regardless of background and to require federal agents to clearly identify themselves and coordinate with incident commanders before taking action. It would declare emergency operations as “Non-Interference Zones” that require agencies to comply with additional rules to operate.

During the arrests on August 27, Border Patrol agents questioned 44 workers in crews from contractors Table Rock Forestry Inc. and ASI Arden Solutions Inc. and identified two workers who they allege were in the country illegally. A spokesperson with the Washington Department of Natural Resources told Stateline that they were not informed of the investigation until after the arrests had been made.

“The statements from the Department of Homeland Security and Bureau of Land Management that were published, at first blush, were patently false,” Fournier told SFGATE, speaking of the agency’s claim that firefighting efforts were not interrupted by the arrests. “There were, there were just claims in there that did not stand up to reason and the world as I know it.”

The arrests stemmed from a multiagency investigation into time card discrepancies, according to members of the fire response team who spoke with the Seattle Times — something that Fournier said is common in firefighting operations and wouldn’t require federal oversight to rectify.

The Department of Homeland Security took issue with the arrested men being identified as firefighters, despite them working for private contractors that advertise wildfire suppression services at the site of the 10,000-acre wildfire. In a news release issued more than a week after the arrests, the department wrote “the two illegal aliens apprehended were NOT firefighters,” and claimed the questioned crews were cutting firewood, not actively fighting the fire.

“To say that they weren’t firefighters and that they weren’t performing firefighting duties — no, I’m not buying that,” Fournier said. “These wildland hand crews aren’t hotshot crews, sure, but they’re the backbone of the wildland fire world. They’re the ones that are doing 90% of the work, and it’s backbreaking, grueling work.”

It’s also the sort of “rough work that sometimes attracts rough people,” he acknowledged, but added that a criminal investigation of members of a firefighting crew should at the very least be well-communicated with incident leaders. He compared arresting someone during an active fire to requiring firefighters to carry vaccine cards to enter firefighting camps during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s a time and a place for [law enforcement action],” Fournier said. “But how this situation at Bear Gulch unfolded, it felt like an overreach.”

Other wildfire veterans in the state have agreed that the arrests felt like a breach in the longstanding protocol that federal agents don’t disrupt emergency responders, according to reports from Stateline.

Thurston County’s proposed ordinance is being reviewed by the county’s legal team, and Fournier believes it could go to a vote and become law within the next four to six weeks. He said that multiple colleagues from other counties have reached out to review the ordinance for possible adoption, and that there is momentum for a similar statewide law to be drafted sometime this year.

County commissioners from Mason County, where the Bear Gulch fire is actively burning, did not respond to SFGATE’s requests for comment on the arrests by the Department of Homeland Security or the proposed ordinance.

The arrests at Bear Gulch have also stirred up responses from beyond Washington state. Two days after the arrests, a letter addressed to the federal agencies involved in the arrest signed by 50 members of Congress demanded the release of more information on the case, including the investigation that led to the arrests, internal DHS policies and information on where the arrestees are being held.

“We should not have to tell you that wildland firefighting is one of the most dangerous and critical public safety duties, especially during what has become one of Washington’s largest active fires,” the letter reads. “The arrest of these hardworking crew members, who put their lives on the line to perform lifesaving duties, is not making our communities safer, no matter the rhetoric you use on TV. The Trump Administration’s thoughtless and cruel immigration enforcement at any cost undermines coordinated emergency response efforts.”

US Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the arrests or the proposed ordinance because the agency does not comment on pending legislation.