SEATTLE — Early in the morning April 2, some 50 masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents entered the Mt. Baker Roofing Company warehouse in Bellingham, Washington, a city 25 miles south of the U.S.-Canadian border. They arrested 37 workers, charged with fraudulently representing their immigration status in seeking jobs, and loaded them onto waiting buses. The agents forced friends and family members who had heard about the raid to wait outside.
Workers here were known for protesting working conditions at the company. They had carried out a job action in 2023 over lack of access to drinking water, bathrooms and breaks.
This is the first workplace raid in Washington state under the new Donald Trump administration. Similar workplace raids in the Bellingham area were carried out under the Barack Obama and George W. Bush presidencies.
The raid against workers here comes a little over a week since the ICE arrest of farmworker-union leader Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez. He has been a leader of the Familias Unidas por la Justicia union since he was 14 years old. He is currently being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, the largest private detention center on the West Coast, awaiting trial on a 2018 deportation order he never received.
Unions in the area have spoken out against the raid and the detention of Juarez. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000, the largest local in the union with 50,000 members in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, issued a statement March 25.
“We’re furious over these credible reports of immigration enforcement violently detaining Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a longtime labor leader who fought for farmworkers and immigrant rights and who helped expose the existence of the very same unmarked ICE facility in Ferndale where he was reportedly held this afternoon.
“In response, our union members grabbed bullhorns and traveled directly to the facility to protest this injustice,” Local 3000 said. “We will continue to show up to worker-led actions as long as it takes.”