Immigration officials on Tuesday morning arrested 25-year-old union farmworker activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez in Sedro-Woolley, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records and Juarez’s fellow organizers.
Juarez, who is a member of the Indigenous Mexican Mixteco community, has organized on behalf of farmworker rights in Washington state since he was 14 years old and worked as a berry picker, according to Rosalinda Guillen, a longtime activist leader and founder of social justice group Community to Community Development.
Guillen says Juarez called her shortly before 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday and she heard Juarez’s partner screaming and crying before the call abruptly ended.
“(It was) Lelo’s voice saying, ‘Leave her alone. She has nothing to do with this. I was just taking her to work,'” Guillen said.
An ICE spokesperson said Juarez is a citizen of Mexico and was ordered by an immigration judge to return there in 2018. Juarez “refused to comply with lawful commands to exit the vehicle he was occupying at the time of the arrest,” according to the spokesperson, and will remain in ICE detention during deportation proceedings.
Juarez was driving his partner to her job at a tulip bulb company in Mount Vernon, said Edgar Franks, political director for Indigenous farmworkers union Familias Unidas por la Justicia. Franks said officials broke Juarez’s window and forced him out of the vehicle. Juarez later called from an ICE facility in Ferndale, Whatcom County, and said he had been detained.
ICE’s online detainee locator system confirmed Juarez was being held at a “holding room” in Ferndale on Tuesday afternoon. Later, records showed he was at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. ICE did not immediately respond to questions about why Juarez had been arrested.
Guillen and Franks said they feared Juarez was targeted because of his activism.
“We feel that there are no First Amendment protections for people that are doing activism in the immigrant community,” Franks said. “This is a basic constitutional right for everyone.”
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said in an emailed statement that she was “closely tracking” Juarez’s arrest, along with the arrest of Lewelyn Dixon, a University of Washington lab technician and green card holder who is being held in ICE detention.
“Arresting law-abiding people, including lawful permanent residents, who pose no threat and play important roles in their communities just diverts resources from detaining actual public safety threats,” Murray said.
“I don’t care what Trump promised on the campaign trail— when it comes to immigration enforcement or anything else, he’s going to need to follow the letter of the law,” her statement read.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, said he was working with Murray’s office to gather more information.
“In arrests across the country, the Trump Administration and ICE have claimed that they are going after ‘the worst of the worst’ — but there is no indication that Alfredo Juarez Zeferino and the other people detained today represent the worst of the worst,” Larsen said in an emailed statement.
Gov. Bob Ferguson said in an emailed statement Tuesday night he was “concerned about the reports I’m hearing” and was working to get more information.
Juarez was in the news as recently as last month, when he led a cohort of farmworker activists to Olympia to meet with lawmakers over farmworker rights. He has also been quoted in The Seattle Times on the conditions faced by striking tulip workers in the Skagit Valley.
“I think pretty much every legislator in Olympia knows him,” Guillen said. “He’s a serious young man who really wants to fight for justice, and he knows how to express himself and he’s tireless. He is like 24/7 on immigrant rights and farmworker rights.”
In 2015, when Juarez was 15, he was arrested during a traffic stop by Bellingham police and sent to an ICE detention facility. Juarez’s family sued the city of Bellingham in federal court, alleging racial profiling, and the city agreed to settle with the family for $100,000.
Seattle Times news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this story.