A wildland firefighter who was arrested by immigration agents while fighting a wildfire in Washington state has been released from detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his attorneys said Wednesday.
Rigoberto Hernandez Hernandez was freed Tuesday after nearly four weeks in detention at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.
Hernandez is now back home in Oregon with his family, said Matt Adams, legal director with the Northwest Immigration Rights Project, which is representing him.
The group, along with attorneys at Oregon-based Innovation Law Lab, said the arrest of Hernandez was illegal and violated due process. The groups’ petition for habeas corpus is still pending.
Adams said the government has dismissed its proceedings to remove Hernandez from the country.
“They’re acknowledging that there’s no justification for this arrest or this type of enforcement action targeting people who are on the front lines working to keep our community safe,” Adams said in an interview.
Attorneys for Hernandez filed the habeas corpus petition on Friday, and the government’s response was due at noon on Tuesday, Adams said.
Rather than refuting the claims of due process violations, ICE released Hernandez around midday on Tuesday.
“I am glad that I am home, and I am excited to see my family,” Hernandez said in the statement issued by the legal groups. “I want to give my thanks to everyone — for their prayers, for the rallies, for sharing about what happened to me and the other firefighter. So many people stepped up to help, and now I want to help others just like they helped me.”
The immigration raid last month at the Bear Gulch fire in Washington state sent shockwaves through the wildland fire community. Wildfire veterans say it was a breach in longstanding protocol that federal agents don’t disrupt emergency responders to check immigration status.
Hernandez and another firefighter were arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which claimed they were in the country illegally. Federal immigration officials also have falsely claimed that the crews were not firefighters.
According to Innovation Law Lab, Hernandez has lived on the West Coast since he was 4 years old and worked as a firefighter for the past three years. He applied for a U-visa in 2018, an application that is still pending due to government backlogs.
“This story just highlights how far astray this whole immigration enforcement regime has gone,” Adams said. “They’re out there in the middle of a disaster zone randomly targeting firefighters. This has nothing to do with community safety, it’s just this message of this war on immigrants.”
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