Patty Murray, the Washington senator, has called for the Trump administration to provide “immediate answers” about reports that two firefighters were detained by border agents as they were responding to a wildfire in the state.
Federal immigration authorities on Wednesday staged an operation on the scene of the Bear Gulch fire, a nearly 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) blaze in the Olympic national forest, where they arrested two people who were part of a contract firefighting crew, the Seattle Times first reported. The fire is the largest currently burning in the state.
The identities of the firefighters have not been made public and federal immigration officials have not said why they were arrested.
In a statement released on Thursday morning, Murray demanded information about the whereabouts of the firefighters and the administration’s policy around immigration enforcement during wildfires.
“This administration’s immigration policy is fundamentally sick. Trump has wrongfully detained everyone from lawful green-card holders to American citizens – no one should assume this was necessary or appropriate,” she said.
The senator said the president had been undercutting firefighting abilities in other ways, including by “decimating” the US Forest Service. The administration significantly cut budgets and staffing at the agencies that manage much of the country’s federal lands, leaving the US unprepared for this year’s fire season, the Guardian previously reported.
“Here in the Pacific north-west, wildfires can [burn] and have burned entire towns to the ground. We count on our brave firefighters, who put their lives on the line, to keep our communities safe – this new Republican policy to detain firefighters on the job is as immoral as it is dangerous,” said Murray, who has represented Washington in the US Senate since 1993.
“What’s next? Will Trump start detaining immigrant service members? Or will he just maintain his current policy of deporting Purple Heart veterans?”
Nearly 430 personnel are responding to the Bear Gulch fire on the state’s Olympic peninsula. Firefighters told the Seattle Times that two contract crews had been sent to cut wood and were waiting for a supervisor when federal law enforcement arrived in the area.
Authorities made the firefighters line up to show ID, the Seattle Times reported. One firefighter told the newspaper that they were not permitted to say goodbye to their detained colleagues.
“I asked them if his [co-workers] can say goodbye to him because they’re family, and they’re just ripping them away,” the firefighter said to the Seattle Times, adding that the federal agent swore and told the firefighter to leave.
The United States Border Patrol and the US Forest Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident management team overseeing the response to the fire said in a statement to the New York Times that the Border Patrol activities did not interfere with firefighting efforts.
