SEATTLE -- Lawyers are demanding the release of a longtime Oregon resident arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol while fighting a Washington state wildfire, saying that the firefighter was on track for legal status after helping federal investigators solve a crime against his family.
His arrest was illegal, the lawyers said Friday, and violated Department of Homeland Security policies that say immigration enforcement must not be conducted at locations where emergency responses are happening.
He is one of two firefighters arrested last week while working the Bear Gulch fire in the Olympic National Forest, which as of Friday had burned about 14 square miles and was only 13% contained, forcing evacuations.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Thursday that it had been helping the Bureau of Land Management with a criminal investigation of two contractors working at the fire when it discovered two firefighters who it said were in the country without permanent legal status.
The firefighter, whose name and country of origin have not been made public, has lived in the U.S. for 19 years after arriving with his family at age 4. He received a U visa certification from the U.S. attorney's office in Oregon in 2017 and submitted his U visa application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the following year.
The U visa program was established by Congress to protect victims of serious crimes who assist federal investigators, and the man has been waiting since 2018 for the immigration agency to decide on his application, according to Stephen Manning, a lawyer with Innovation Law Lab, a Portland-based nonprofit that's representing the firefighter.
Another Homeland Security policy says agents can't detain people who are receiving or have applied for victim-based immigration benefits, his lawyer said. Charging the man with an immigration violation was "an illegal after-the-fact justification" given his U visa status, the attorney said.
His lawyers said Friday that they located him in the immigration detention system and were able to make contact. They were still processing information and are demanding his immediate release, they told the Associated Press in an email.
A senior Homeland Security official said in a statement to the AP on Friday that the two men apprehended were not firefighters and were not actively fighting the fire. Officials said they were providing a supporting role by cutting logs into firewood.
"The firefighting response remained uninterrupted the entire time,"
the statement said.
"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."
When the U.S. Bureau of Land Management was asked to provide information about why its contracts with two companies were terminated and 42 firefighters were escorted away from the state's largest wildfire, it declined to answer. It would only say it cooperates with other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.
"These law enforcement professionals contribute to broader federal enforcement efforts by maintaining public safety, protecting natural resources, and collaborating with the agencies, such as the Border Patrol,"
Interior Department spokesperson Alyse Sharpe told the AP in an email.
Manning said in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that the arrest violated Homeland Security policy.
Wyden was critical of the Border Patrol's operation, saying the Trump administration was more concerned about conducting raids on fire crews than protecting communities from catastrophic fires. Firefighters put their lives on the line, Wyden emphasized, including the Oregon firefighter who died Sunday while battling a wildfire in southwestern Montana.
"The last thing that wildland firefighter crews need is to be worried about masked individuals trampling their due process rights,"
Wyden said in an email to the AP.
Meanwhile, wildfire officials were still trying to get control of the Bear Gulch fire. The number of personnel working on the blaze was listed at 303 on Friday, down from 349 a day earlier.