ICE Nighttime Raid Targets WA Family Camping Over Labor Day Weekend

As fears mounted over increased immigration arrests and deportations across Washington state, five Snohomish County families believed their favorite campgrounds in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest would always be a place they could feel safe together.

Their belief shattered last Friday, when the families awoke to armed federal immigration agents — accompanied by U.S. Forest Service rangers — yelling and shaking their tents just before midnight, then arresting five men who emerged.

The nighttime raid traumatized the men’s children and wives, who are now scrambling to pay for an immigration lawyer and living expenses without their families’ primary breadwinners. They are also grappling with losing the one place their family could set aside fears of federal immigration enforcement and enjoy time together.

Without it, no place feels safe — not even their homes, said 19-year-old Carmen, who watched agents handcuff and arrest her father, uncles and godfathers in the middle of the night.

{snip}

The Labor Day weekend raid appears to be among the first known instances of federal immigration agents partnering with the U.S. Forest Service to target people camping in federal forestlands. On July 13, U.S. Customs and Enforcement agents detained 13 people in an enforcement operation in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest, according to reporting by The 19th.

{snip}

On Wednesday, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed ICE agents last Friday arrested five men, all originally from Mexico, during a joint operation with the U.S. Forest Service in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. {snip}

{snip}

Over more than a dozen prior camping trips, the families had only once spoken to a U.S. Forest Service ranger who stopped by their campsite to warn them about fire danger. When family members who had gone for a six-hour hike returned around 6:30 p.m. Friday, they were surprised but not concerned to learn two rangers had visited their campsite hours earlier and warned those who had stayed behind to pick up their trash, Carmen said.

The family tidied their campsite, but the rangers returned shortly after 10 p.m. — this time demanding to see all of the adults’ IDs. When Carmen asked why, she said one of the rangers told her it was to have a record of them warning her family about their trash.

{snip}

The rangers collected and took pictures of IDs from three adults, then wrote down the full first and last names and dates of birth of the other adults in the group. The pictures and information, the rangers said, would be used in case they had to issue them tickets for not collecting their trash, Carmen said.

{snip}

“Next thing you know, we wake up to someone outside shaking our tents forcefully, saying, ‘Come out, we’re police,’” Carmen said. “And, ‘Come out if you don’t want us to use our force against you guys.’”

{snip}