The Donald Trump administration is now actively running border patrol operations at active firefighting response sites. Two firefighters found out the hard way on Wednesday, Aug. 27, in Washington, where they were fighting the Bear Gulch fire on the Olympic Peninsula, when they were arrested by federal law enforcement.
There are currently 400 people on the frontlines in Washington battling the wildfire. The workers were originally hired by two private contractors, but on Wednesday morning, as they were setting up to fight the fires, border patrol agents were working beside them for three hours while checking the identifications of all the firefighters on site. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have already formed a reputation for conducting their operations in locations people find confusing, but this was particularly surprising because concern quickly arose about whether the operation disrupted the firefighting.
