On August 27, 2025, as flames from the Bear Gulch wildfire continued to devour forests on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, two firefighters found themselves in handcuffs rather than at the fire line. The arrests, carried out by federal agents during what appeared to be an immigration enforcement operation, have ignited fierce debate over the intersection of disaster response and immigration policy—and left many in the firefighting community stunned.
According to The Seattle Times, the two arrested individuals were part of a private contracting crew sent to the northeast side of Lake Cushman to cut wood for the local community. The Bear Gulch wildfire, which erupted on July 6, has already consumed nearly 9,000 acres, making it Washington state’s largest wildfire of the year. As of August 28, the blaze was only 13 percent contained, despite the efforts of roughly 400 personnel, including both federal and privately contracted firefighters.
Witnesses described a tense, hours-long standoff on the fire line. Federal agents, identified by several reports as members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Border Patrol, arrived at the scene and demanded identification from the contracted fire crews. Over the course of three hours, they lined up firefighters and meticulously checked their documents. Crew members were explicitly told not to record the incident on their phones, a directive that only heightened the sense of anxiety and confusion among the responders.
“You risked your life out here to save the community. This is how they treat us,” one firefighter, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Seattle Times. The frustration was palpable. When a fellow firefighter asked if the detained men could say goodbye to their families and crew before being taken away, a federal officer reportedly replied, “You need to get the f— out of here. I’m gonna make you leave.” The abruptness of the arrests left the rest of the crew shaken and, by all accounts, feeling abandoned in the midst of an ongoing emergency.
The Department of Natural Resources confirmed the incident, and an incident commander on the Bear Gulch fire stated that his team was “aware of a Border Patrol operation on the fire.” However, he emphasized that the law enforcement activity was not interfering with the ongoing response to the wildfire. Still, the optics were troubling. As flames threatened communities and resources, the focus shifted—at least temporarily—from fire suppression to immigration enforcement.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson expressed his alarm the following morning, stating on X (formerly Twitter), “I’m deeply concerned about this situation. I’ve directed my team to get more information about what happened.” The DHS, ICE, and Border Patrol did not immediately respond to requests for comment from multiple news outlets, including The Seattle Times and Rolling Stone.
The timing of the arrests is particularly fraught. The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported that wildfires in the U.S. burned over 8.9 million acres last year—well above the 10-year average and the most since 2020. With unusually high temperatures and scant rainfall gripping much of the country, the NIFC has forecasted “above normal significant fire potential” through September. Against this backdrop, any disruption to firefighting efforts, especially involving the removal of trained personnel, raises serious concerns about public safety and the ability to contain future blazes.
According to the Associated Press, as cited by The Seattle Times, about 85 percent of privately contracted fire crews in Washington and Oregon are Hispanic—a trend that continues in 2025. Many of these workers are immigrants, and while language barriers on the frontlines have occasionally caused safety concerns, these have not been significant enough to dissuade fire agencies from relying on immigrant labor. The sudden enforcement action at Bear Gulch underscores the precarious position many of these workers occupy.
Immigration enforcement at disaster response sites is rare. In 2021, the Biden administration’s DHS declared that “absent exigent circumstances, immigration enforcement will not be conducted at locations where disaster and emergency response and relief is being provided.” It remains unclear whether the Trump administration, which has prioritized a nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigration, is still observing this policy. The presence of Customs and Border Patrol at the Bear Gulch site, coupled with a CBP vehicle spotted at the scene, suggests that the administration’s approach may have shifted.
The policy changes don’t stop at the fire line. As Rolling Stone reported, new DHS guidelines unveiled this week require aid organizations and state agencies that receive federal funds to cooperate with ICE, prohibiting them from “operating any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.” These organizations must now verify the immigration status of individuals before providing disaster relief, and are barred from “harboring, concealing, or shielding from detection illegal aliens.” The Trump administration has also revoked previous guidelines that prevented ICE from detaining migrants at hospitals, churches, schools, and even immigration hearings, expanding the list of places where vulnerable people can be targeted for enforcement.
For many in the fire response community, these policy shifts are not just bureaucratic changes—they have real-world consequences. Removing experienced firefighters from the frontlines can slow response times and increase the risk to communities threatened by wildfires. “Federal officials showing up to job sites and removing these workers from privately contracted crews will very likely delay wildfire response times and put more Americans at risk,” noted The Week. The same article pointed out the irony that such actions could undermine the administration’s own efforts to reduce wildfire risk. On the very day of the arrests, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced steps to open up nearly 45 million acres of federal lands for road construction and timber harvesting—measures intended to reduce the fuel load and make wildfires less damaging. Yet, more than half of the acres burned by wildfires in 2024 were on federal lands, according to NIFC data.
As the Bear Gulch fire continues to burn—expected to last into the fall, when cooler temperatures and rain might finally bring relief—the incident has left many questions unanswered. Why were the firefighters targeted now, in the middle of a crisis? Will this become a new normal for emergency response crews working in the U.S.? For now, those on the front lines are left to grapple with the uncertainty, hoping that their efforts to protect communities won’t be derailed by policies that treat them as suspects rather than heroes.
In the shadow of the Bear Gulch fire, the lines between public safety, immigration enforcement, and humanitarian need have never felt more sharply drawn.
