Immigration officials conducted an operation at the site of the largest wildfire in Washington State, fire officials said on Wednesday. The incident appeared to be a rare case of federal officials enforcing immigration laws at the site of an emergency.
Officials in charge of fighting the Bear Gulch fire in the Olympic National Forest, west of Seattle, said in a brief statement on Wednesday night that they were “aware of a Border Patrol operation” at the site of the fire.
“The Border Patrol operation is not interfering with firefighting activity and Bear Gulch firefighters continue to make progress on the fire,” the officials said in their statement.
Hours earlier, the Seattle Times newspaper reported that two people fighting the blaze had been arrested earlier in the day. It cited interviews with firefighters, whom it did not name, and what it described as video of a confrontation between the firefighters and law enforcement agents.
The fire officials did not say whom the operation had targeted. They referred questions about the operation to a Border Patrol office in Port Angeles, Wash. Federal and state officials did not immediately respond to inquiries about the fire.
The blaze in the forest, west of Seattle, was the largest in the state as of Thursday morning, having consumed nearly 9,000 acres.
The Seattle Times report said that the federal agents had made the arrests after showing up on Wednesday morning at a site near Lake Cushman where two crews of private contractors had been assigned to cut wood for a local community. The Bear Gulch fire is burning next to the lake.
Border enforcement operations do not normally occur at active firefighting sites. During the 2021 wildfire season, the Department of Homeland Security said that immigration enforcement would not be conducted in places where disaster and emergency response and relief was being provided, “absent exigent circumstances.”
In some cases, federal immigration agents have assisted firefighters by helping with evacuation efforts.
The Bear Gulch fire was 13 percent contained of as Wednesday evening, officials said in an update. Officials have said that the fire, which started in early July, was caused by human activity. The exact cause is under investigation.
Parts of Washington State were under a red flag warning early Thursday. Many roads, trails and campfires inside Olympic National Forest were closed.
Mike Ives is a reporter for The Times based in Seoul, covering breaking news around the world.
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