Alfredo Juarez Zeferino interview with The Bellingham Herald: English transcript
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained farmworker and labor activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, 25, of Sedro-Woolley, Wash., on March 25 in Whatcom County. He was temporarily held at an ICE detention center at nearby Ferndale, Wash., before being transferred to the privately-operated Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. Juarez Zeferino remained at the Tacoma facility for almost four months before ultimately deciding to request voluntary departure. A judge granted his request July 14, and he has since returned to Mexico. The following is a full transcript of The Bellingham Herald’s Aug. 11 interview with Juarez Zeferino regarding his experience.
Reporter Jack Belcher: You just told us the city where you are; I assume you’re safe there as well?
Alfredo Juarez Zeferino: Yes, I am. Like I said, I’m currently in Oaxaca City but I don’t live here. My main residence is in Santa Cruz, Yucucani, Guerrero. Just a couple of hours ago I picked up my sister and my partner, who were left behind in the U.S. when I got deported here, so now they joined me.
Belcher: Could you describe what happened when you were arrested here?
Juarez Zeferino: Yeah, so on March 25 around 7 in the morning, I woke up. At that time I wasn’t working in the field, but my partner was, so I was getting ready to take her to her work, which starts at 8. I lived in Sedro-Woolley at that moment, and so, around 7:10 we left the house, the apartment where we lived. About five minutes away from home an unmarked car pulled behind me, but I didn’t think much of it until a few seconds later, it turned its lights on. I thought it was an unmarked police vehicle. I rolled my window down a couple of inches, and as I looked on my mirror to see which agent was going to come out, somebody came out of the car. I read the name on the vest that the agent was wearing, and it said “ICE.”
I didn’t think much of it because I don’t have any problem with the law, so I was like, “they’re probably looking for somebody else.” I had my windows a couple inches down where I could talk clearly with the agent, and the agent came up to my window and immediately I noticed that another car, an unmarked car, pulled right in front of my car.
The agent asked me to identify myself, and I told him my name. He asked to see an identification. I told him, “Yeah, I can show you my driver’s license. Can I get it?” He said yes. I grabbed my wallet, and as I was taking out my driver’s license, I asked the agent why he pulled me over. He just said to show him my identification card, and I told him, “Yeah, I’ll show you my license, I have a license, but give me a reason why you pulled me over.” Then he started asking me to step out of the car, and I told them, “Nope, I’m not stepping out. You gotta tell me why you pulled me over or show me a warrant.” He said, “Step out.” I told him, “No, you have to give me a reason why you pulled me over or show me a warrant, and I will step out if I’m the person you’re looking for. As I was continuing to ask him for the warrant, and about to show him my driver’s license, he had a little gadget in his hand. At that moment everything was happening so fast I couldn’t pick up on what it was that he had in his hand. He put it up on my window and it cracked the car window.
Then, as he was trying to put his hand inside the car to unlock it — because the car was locked — my partner started crying because she got really scared. So, I told him, “Just step back. I will get out.” And so I opened my car, and I stepped out. The agent who broke my window, behind him, the second agent snatched my driver’s license from my hand, and I put both of my hands up. They put me against my car, and they put my hands behind my back and put handcuffs on me. As they were doing that I was asking them to give me a reason why, to show me a warrant, but they didn’t tell me anything.
The agent that had broken my window walked me to the back of his car, the one that originally had put its lights on, and I noticed, immediately, every other agent, there were around five, six, or seven of them. I couldn’t get the actual count, but I saw one of the agent’s clothes say “DEA” on it. Anyway, all of them went toward my partner, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could hear my partner crying. She was really scared. I told them not to do anything to her, that she could just walk home, walking would probably be like 10 minutes. So they stepped back, and I asked the agent that had broken my window to give my car key to her so that my brother could later move my car, because I couldn’t just leave it on the side of the road with a broken window. He gave the key to my partner, and I asked her to call my brother so he could go pick up my car. From there, the agents just drove off and took me to an unmarked building in Ferndale, a small ICE detention.
Belcher: Were you ever given a justification for your arrest?
Juarez Zeferino: While they were arresting me, I was asking for a warrant or a reason. When I got to Ferndale detention, I asked them again to be given a reason or warrant of why they were doing this. They didn’t tell me anything until hours had passed. At the moment when they arrested me all the agent’s faces were covered, and I couldn’t identify any of them. After hours had passed while I was in the small detention center in Ferndale, one of the agents asked me to step into a smaller office space that they had. He told me that he was the one that broke my window, and that he, too, did not know why they were sent to pick me up. When I arrived there in Ferndale, that agent ran my name in their system to see what my criminal history was, if there was any. He said no, I was completely clean, that they had nothing on me, so he did not know why they picked me up.
He asked me what I wanted to do, if I wanted deportation or what I was going to request. I told him, “No. What do you mean I’m gonna ask for deportation? I want to get released here.” He said, “No, we can’t release you.” Then I asked him, “OK, schedule me in front of a judge, let me see a judge, because I’m not signing any documents that you guys will be giving me, and I don’t want a deportation, I grew up here.” He said, “Alright” and stepped away.
He allowed me to make, two or three minutes, a phone call. I called Rosalinda, the founder of Community to Community, the organization I was organizing with. I called her and let her know where I was. By that time they had already found out that I was picked up, but they did not know where I was. My partner had also called them. They called a bunch of supporters in Whatcom, and during the day I was there — I was there for a whole day in Ferndale. I was told days later that about 300 folks showed up at that unmarked building demanding my release, but they were told that I had already been sent to Tacoma, that I was no longer there, which was a lie. I was still there at the time they were there.
When I got to the Tacoma detention center, (facility owner and operator) The GEO Group was processing me in their system, and I asked them, “Listen, ICE did not tell me why they picked me up. Can you tell me why they picked me up?” The officer said, “Let me check.” A couple minutes passed by, and as I was sitting in front of them being processed, he told me “there’s nothing in the system for you.” He also had no idea why they had picked me up.
I did not get an answer until the second day, when one of my longtime friends who was a labor lawyer came to see me. I asked her if she knew why I was picked up, and she said that they looked me up in the ICE website or somewhere. They said there was an order of removal for me that was placed back in 2017, close to 2018. I had no idea why that was there. I never knew about it. ICE never told me about it. Nobody told me anything about it. As far as I knew, I was clean, I was doing my best to organize in the community, help farmworkers — that was my focus. I had no idea of this removal order. That was the justification, but that came from a friend who was a lawyer. ICE never told me anything as far as why they picked me up.
Editor Scot Heisel: Do you have any idea what that removal order was about? Was there any basis for that, that was given to you?
Juarez Zeferino: No. I asked my lawyer — a couple days passed and a few lawyers visited, and so I picked one. I asked him to look into the whole thing. He told me that around September or October (2017), ICE had scheduled a removal hearing for me with the immigration judge in Seattle. So, by scheduling me for a hearing, they had to serve me or notify me of that hearing date so I could go. But they did not serve me in person. They sent it to an address that I used to live at, but I had no idea I had to, you know, let ICE know where I was at the whole time. They sent it to a Mount Vernon address. I was no longer living with my parents. The whole time I was in the U.S., I was living with my parents. We’re a very close family. So when they mailed that letter to notify me, I wasn’t there. I didn’t receive it. It came back, and they scanned it, saying the letter came back, that I did not get any notification. And so, the court date came, I did not show up. I had no idea about it, and then that judge issued a removal order for me. That’s the information I got from my lawyer.
Heisel: Do you feel you were targeted specifically as a union representative?
Juarez Zeferino: I think so. I started organizing at the age of 13, and very quickly I had — not necessarily looking for it — got pushed in the front line of organizing because I speak three languages: English, Spanish and Mixteco, which is the native language here in the south of Mexico. By speaking those three languages, I was able to help farmworkers tell their story to the community and the other way around, have the community ask questions to the farmworkers. A lot of the farmworkers in Skagit and Whatcom, the majority speak Mixteco or Triki. For many years, at the beginning, that was the thing I was doing, help translate for the farmworkers so they can tell their story about the issues they face at the workplace.
But recently I’ve been very involved with passing laws that the agriculture industry doesn’t like. For example, the overtime that we won for farmworkers in the state, I helped with that. The paid rest break, I helped with that back in 2017. Before it, the farmworkers did not have lunch breaks or regular breaks. We would clock in whatever time the boss said, and we wouldn’t leave until late, late, the end of the day. My mom, we would, you know, wake up early, prepare lunch, but we never got the chance to eat that lunch until we got back at the end of the day. And this happened throughout the whole industry. I think by helping with those, I did become a big target for many reasons. I support a lot of immigration work. I’ve been very active in helping promote the registry bill that’s currently in congress that got introduced by senator Alex Padilla. The one I was very involved in was for the House, which was HR 1511, so of course ICE or Border Patrol, any of these folks, would have targeted me.
I serve at the immigration advisory board for the board of Bellingham, and in this session at our state, we were very involved in gathering support to pass the bill that sets a cap for the increase of rent. We supported it in the previous year, but in this session we were very involved, meeting with senators and representatives, asking them to vote yes on it.
The signing of it by the governor, I found that out when I was detention. I got a newspaper that said Gov. Ferguson had signed it. That really warmed my heart. But yeah, I mean, I’ve been doing a lot of important work to help the community, not just in labor, but throughout the whole community. Any of these works that I’ve been doing, made me a big target. I do definitely believe I was targeted.
Reporter Hannah Edelman: Can you talk a bit about the conditions and what it was like in the centers in Ferndale and Tacoma? I know you wrote the letter about what was going on in Tacoma, but if you could talk more about it.
Juarez Zeferino: In Ferndale, it’s a smaller detention. What I saw was two empty rooms that could probably each hold about five or six folks in each room. I only saw two. I don’t know what the rest of the facility looks like, but where I was, there were just two small rooms.
In Tacoma, the way things there work, the GEO is supposed to provide three meals a day to everybody that are detained there, but they also have a commissary, or a little online store that you can purchase stuff if you have family that could deposit money in your account. The moment I arrived, the organization I was working with deposited money so I could make phone calls and a bit of money to buy some stuff. The items that they were selling there were very limited.
I used the funds that they deposited to buy noodles and mac and cheese. They had a few cookies that I purchased, but those are the stuff you can buy. That’s if you have a family that can support you from outside. If you don’t, then you just eat what they give you. Again, it’s supposed to be three meals a day.
I think the really shocking point for me was when they gave us chicken. I asked the other detainee there, what’s the best food GEO was serving. He said it’s the chicken, but it’s not good. It’s supposed to be the best food, but it’s not.
The second week I was there. The food came in very late. This was the third meal of the day. We were all very hungry. There was a detainee there who was from Brazil. He was the first guy that got in line. I was the second one that got in line. He grabbed his tray and immediately walked off because he was hungry. He put his tray on the table, and he started looking at the food.
I grabbed my tray, and I got a table also, and as soon as I sat down he said, “What the hell is this shit?” I thought he was just mad, so I lifted up the skin from the chicken because I noticed that it had a couple feathers on it, so I was like, “I’m just gonna take this stuff off.” The moment I lift it up, I could see blood just dripping from the skin and the meat. So he walked up to me, because by that time I got along with pretty much everyone in there. He said, “Is your tray like this?” What he did, he had separated the drumstick from the rest of the meat, and in between there, you could just see a pile of blood sitting there. From the look of it, the cooks just took it from the freezer, put it in the oven for about a minute, and that was it. We could see the blood. I picked up the piece of chicken from my tray and I lifted it up, and already where the chicken was, there was a pile of blood that was sitting there.
The rest of the line saw it. Everybody got mad and started yelling, and then we all refused to eat that food. We told the officer that was in that unit that we were not gonna eat that, because if we ate it, we were going to get sick. So, those of us that had gotten it, about 10 or 12 people, we all went and put it back, and the officer said, “We’ll see what we can do. We can probably cook it again.” We told him, “If you can cook it, then take it back and cook it. The food is already late, we’re hungry. Just take it back, cook it.” They took the chicken back. We waited hours. I believe they brought us food, but it wasn’t the chicken anymore. It was a sandwich that they brought. That was the really bad thing that I saw there.
The regular day food, just getting uncooked food, uncooked beans, rice, it’s very common to get uncooked food. Also, after that first time I saw that blood in the chicken, I saw it multiple times. What I’ve done, where there wasn’t as much blood, there were microwaves in that unit, there was a total of 80 detainees, where we could heat up the noodles or the mac and cheese. I put the chicken in the microwave to try and cook it, but the blood would just dry on the meat, and it looked nasty. I ate it sometimes, but it tasted really bad. By that time, I was getting tired of eating noodles and mac and cheese, and so the only different food I could try was this chicken that was tasting nasty. Many times I just grabbed the tray and took it straight to the trash can. I didn’t eat it.
A lot of the detainees did not have families outside that could support them or weren’t from this state. At the Tacoma center there were folks from all over the country. We got folks from Massachusetts, Miami, Texas, Arizona — just everywhere where ICE was picking folks up. For many of them, they were the main breadwinners of their home. I was kind of lucky that I had folks from outside supporting me and depositing funds to my account, where I could buy the noodles when food was really bad.
The third meal, a lot of the time, was very late, and there were times that the third meal of the previous day did not come until 1 or 2 in the morning of the next day. It was very hard for us to get any sleep, especially when we were all very hungry. When we ate the food that was uncooked, a lot of us got sick.
On the medical side, I signed up to go get eyedrops because the lights being on 24/7 — they do turn off a few lights from 12 a.m. to 5 or 6 — but I wasn’t used to so much light being on the whole time, so I started having some vision problems.
I had signed up for a sick hall. That’s when you sign up, they call the day before, and they send you the next day to go see a doctor. I was sent into the waiting room to see a doctor. There were about 30 or 40 folks that wanted to see a doctor. There was only one. The doctor only saw two or three folks, and then the officer just told us, “The rest of you can go back and sign up again tomorrow.” I just started asking the other folks, “Is this common?” We’re not here because we want to be, we’re sick. We need this medical attention. A lot of them were very sick and said “this is normal.” You just had to sign up and go again the next day.
If you didn’t get in, if the doctors didn’t see you, then you just sign up again and hope, you know, they’ll see you. I went back to the unit, and I asked a detainee if he had eye drops, and he said yes. That’s something you can buy from the commissary. I used a bit of his, and then I ordered my own. That was the only time I signed up for sick hall
.Again, I was there 24-7 with these guys. A lot of them were going to the sick hall, waiting to see doctors. They were just getting returned. And they’re signing up again, and I just saw that happen again, again and again. And so when I was sick, I just did not even bother to sign up for sick hall and go and wait in this freezing waiting room for hours. … And what a lot of the folks there, including I, did, was just try to sleep through the pain, and hopefully when we wake up, the pain eases a bit.
And so, yeah, that’s … that’s on the medical side, but because the food is uncooked, a lot of folks got sick really often.
I think another big thing is the yard access. The whole time, the three-and-a-half months that I was there, I think we got about five or six chances to go outside. That whole three months and a half.
We asked the officers there. They said they did not know what was going on. We were asked to talk to whoever was the higher authority than them. And those folks would come in, and we were just asking, “Hey, where’s our rec yard? We have the right to at least one hour outdoors every day. Where is it?”
They just tell us, you know, “Wait, we’ll… we’ll see what we can do.” And that was the answer we got every time we asked them. They would just say “Oh yeah, let me look into it, let me see what I can do for you guys,” and that was it.
It’s just hard to be in this closed area with 80 other folks. A lot of folks there did not have criminal history. A lot of are hardworking members of the community who have lived here for many years. They have families, wives, kids. And being locked up, it was very stressful. Seeing other folks being stressed and knowing other folks are going through this made things very hard. Not having access to, you know, outside, or at least do some walking, or catching some fresh air. It was very tough being in there.
Heisel: Can you walk us through your decision to go back to Mexico. What led to that decision?
Juarez Zeferino: Many things went into coming to that decision. When I got the lawyer a couple of days after I was put into the Tacoma detention center, what we tried to do was get me out on bond because I don’t have a criminal history. The two big things the court looks at is whether the person asking for the bond, whether they are a flight risk or a danger to the community. A flight risk will be somebody not showing up to their hearing. Again, the reason I did not show up to my hearing is because I had no idea about it. I told the court if these guys would have just let me know, I would show up.
The second, the danger to the community, I’ve been, have been, in the community for 12, 13 years, participating, organizing, helping build a stronger community. I’m not a threat to it. We got a lot of letters of support from many organizations, from congressional leaders, our state leaders and just members of the community. So we just have piles of letters that were showing their support for me, that we have submitted as part of the evidence when we asked for the bond. Looking into those two things, I was kind of sure that I was going to get the bond approved.
The judge asked, the day when we showed up for the bond, the judge asked my lawyer how much I could pay if the judge was to set a bond. My lawyer said, well, we can start off with $5,000. We know that since his detention, there’s been a lot of support for him, a lot of folks are donating to get him out, so we can afford up to $5,000, or if the judge decides a bit higher than that, that we could probably, we could pay it.
The judge did not issue an immediate decision at that time. She told us she would be delivering her decision later that day or the next day. When her decision came at the end of the day, when I called my lawyer to see what the decision was, he told me that she said yes to the $5,000 but she also said she had no jurisdiction to grant me a bond. And we were like, “What the hell does that mean? You’re saying yes to $5,000 for a bond, but you’re saying there’s no jurisdiction?” Again, she is an immigration judge. What do we do? The person who is authorized to do this is an immigration judge, so we went up to the right person and asked them for this approval, but they are saying they don’t have jurisdiction? Anyway, we appealed that decision, but an appeal can take up to six months, and what we’ve done after learning that I wasn’t gonna get released on bond, we tried to terminate the removal that the ICE had placed me in. We asked that the judge terminate the removal order and I could get released into the community from there, apply for a release or some sort of legal status. I had options.
I forgot to mention that, I think the third day I was in the detention center, ICE, they tried to deport me, or put me on a plane without giving me any warning. I learned that my name was on a list for folks that were getting removed that night, only because I asked the officer who were on the list that were gonna get sent off that day. He said, “Oh here is the list.” And so I looked at the list, and it had my name on it.
What they tried to do was to remove me quickly, without giving me a chance to fight my case or defend myself. But the thing is, by that time I already had secured a lawyer, so I called (my lawyer) right away. I think around 11 p.m., he sent out an email to ICE asking that I should not be put on that plane because I had a lawyer, and also by that time we had asked an immigration judge in Seattle to allow me to fight my case in the U.S. What we asked that judge was to reopen the case. That way I can fight it, and the judge agreed, so then they couldn’t put me on the plane that quick, even though they tried.
I know they definitely were trying to be very quiet about it, and just snatch me and put me on the plane, but because I looked on that list, I saw my name, I was able to call my lawyer.
Heisel: So if you hadn’t found your name on that list, you probably wouldn’t have known, and you would have been gone. Do you know where that plane was going?
Juarez Zeferino: No idea, but we know that any folks that got into those planes, they were getting deported. Deported or removed to another facility in a different state. I think that for this plane, we were sure that it was gonna be deportation with this flight. Yeah, because the other detainees that did go and sign up, or did go and sign their deportation, had told us, “Hey, later tonight, they’re gonna call our name, and where we’re going, we are getting sent off to our home country.”
Heisel: The judge in Seattle gave you a new glimmer of hope. What happened to that?
Juarez Zeferino: The final day to know whether the judge was gonna side with me in terminating it — or side against, or go against me and still uphold that removal order and allow ICE to remove me — was June 16. June 16 came, in the morning we went in front of the judge, literally the day before we spent hours prepping for this whole hearing. What we were expecting was gonna happen was ICE giving their side, my lawyers giving our side, and then see what the judge was gonna do. But when we showed up that day, I did not count the minutes, but it felt like a minute. My hearing lasted a minute. It’s like, I sat down, she said, “You have no case.” And that was it. She said, “Well, what do you want to do? You want deportation? Or you want a bit more time to think about what you’re gonna do?”
I asked her to give me some time to think about it, and she set another court date for July 14, and so after the 16th, I already knew a lot about what’s going on with the other detainees, because I was talking to them. I’m asking them for updates and where they were at.
We had folks in my unit who did win their asylum cases and, you know, other cases that folks were applying for that they have won, but ICE still said that they were going to deport them. That was a big part of why I came to my decision, was that if I win my case eventually, if I keep fighting this, if I win, ICE could just say, “Nope, you’re going back to Mexico.”
Other things I saw were the rare times the judges have granted bonds, those families paid, but ICE still would not release them. There was a guy from Kenya that was living in my unit, He had been living in Chicago for 10-plus years. They caught him, and they brought him to the Tacoma center. He went up and asked for a bond, and he got it approved for $7,500. His family paid the next day, so we were all really happy for him, that he was gonna get released. The end of the day came, nothing. We’re like, “OK, maybe tomorrow,” and time started passing by. I believe about 30 days passed from the day he paid the bond, until he has to get another court. In between that time he had been sending messages to ICE requesting to be released because his family had paid already. But ICE just told him, “Nope, you just gotta wait for your next hearing, and then you’re gonna get deported.”
He did not have a lawyer, so what I and other folks did, those of us that did have lawyers, we gave them our lawyer’s phone number, and we talked to our lawyers about his case, and eventually, a couple lawyers came in and visited him and one of them took his case.
His court date came, and his lawyer brought up that his bond was approved and his family have paid, and they have receipts, and they had paid 30-plus days ago. Then the judge ordered ICE to release him immediately. And so, only then he was released.
There were other folks. For example, there’s a guy from Guatemala who won his case in Texas. Instead of releasing him, they shipped him into the Tacoma Detention Center where ICE appealed his win. He fought the appeal and won. ICE appealed again. He fought and won, so by this time he had won three times and ICE would still not release him. He has been in detention for … I’m not sure. It’s well over a year that he has been in detention, and ICE has still not released him.
I got out. He’s still in the detention center. I don’t know when he’s gonna get out, but he started sounding like he was losing hope.
He had won three times and they would still not release him, so all that stuff that was happening is a big part of why I chose a voluntary departure, because I knew if I won the case, ICE could just do the same thing to me. They could just appeal. I could appeal, you know. I could fight that appeal win and there was just an appeal, and it would just be appeal and appeal, and just … all those times I would just be stuck in that terrible place. I knew that the only way I would get released there is by asking for voluntary departure.
So when July 14 came, a few days before that I told my lawyer, “Hey listen. I know we have a really strong case, but with all the things that ICE is doing, the way they’re handling all these other cases, we just … I just don’t want to be in here for much longer. I have you know, in the meantime I talked with my family. They were, a lot of them were crying. I got a lot of visits from community members, organizations telling me to stay strong, and I could notice that they were also hurt that I was stuck in that terrible place.
I saw that the only way I will be getting out of this place and getting a bit of justice after all asking for a bond, asking to terminate the case, and all this injustice that I’m facing in here, the only bit of justice I could get is if I get granted a voluntary departure.
Even after all of that the judge could say, “Nope, it’s just deportation.” And so I asked for the voluntary departure on July 14, and the judge did grant me that. And so by asking, by getting the voluntary departure from here, in Mexico, I have options of coming back to the U.S. through visas or sponsorships. I would say that would be the only piece of justice I got was getting a voluntary departure.
Heisel: Do you intend to come back to the U.S? Do you want to live in Whatcom County again?
Juarez Zeferino: Yeah, definitely. I grew up there. I started working in the fields at age 13 in 2013 but I’ve been living in the U.S. way before that, when my parents would go between California to Washington following the berry season. In 2012, that’s when we decided to stay in Washington. In 2013 I started organizing, so I’ve invested half of my life to that community. And yes, I do intend to come back.
I’ve just been here in Mexico, two weeks, three weeks? I’ll spend some time with my family, I’ll be talking to my lawyers, we’ll see our options for visas and ways to come back, but yeah, I do intend to come back. In the meantime, I want to see how I can support everybody from here.
Heisel: Will you be able to stay involved with your union?
Juarez Zeferino: Yeah, I have actually been a part of a few presentations already, the last one was yesterday, talking about the H-2A program.
Heisel: What advice would you give to other immigrants in Whatcom County who might find themselves in a similar situation?
Juarez Zeferino: I was thinking about that question, and it’s hard. It’s very hard because we all got family that we need to feed, buy the food, pay the rent, all of that. In my case, I was taking my partner to work and I got picked up. That happens to many, many families, where they’re heading to work and they don’t come back home. To find advice to give to those folks, it’s hard. What do you say to a family like that? Or to a kid whose parents are going to work and they don’t come back? The only thing that I would say is to stay strong and hopefully the three-and-a-half years goes by fast and we get an administration that understands the people, and understands our work, and see what we can do. I think that will be the only advice I can think of, to stay strong and to know that they’re not alone. I know I’m not alone. There are communities out there. We all support each other.
Heisel: What are your plans for the future?
Juarez Zeferino: I want to come back to Washington, keep organizing. By organizing, I’m not only helping the workers, I’m helping the economy to help create a stronger labor, a more stable labor. It’s benefitting everybody, not just the farmworkers, when we get more rights, or when our rights are respected. As consumers you know the food you’re eating, or that you’re about to share with your family, the folks that were handling that, their rights were getting respected and they were getting fair pay.
From Mexico, some of the challenges that I have seen, with some of these presentations I’ve been (involved with) so far, the big one is access to electricity. The town where I live, it rains a lot here. When that happens, a lot of the time the light just goes off. I lose Wi-Fi, I lose internet connection, and I can’t do those interviews or presentations. So that’s just one of the few challenges that I’ve seen so far, and I’m looking for ways, how do I organize around that? One option could be traveling to a nearby big city, which is about two hours away, paying a taxi and going to a bigger city where there’s always lights and do my interviews or presentations from there, or find another way to get internet. I’ll be looking for ways to move around that and keep organizing.
Belcher: And then, regarding the plane they tried to put you on. You said that was your third day in the Tacoma facility?
Juarez Zeferino: Yeah, they weren’t successful with me because I had a lawyer ready, but there were multiple folks, they were successful in removing those folks. I know there was a guy that, they tried to remove him, but he just would not get up and go with them, and so they let him stay for another week. They asked him to go again and he said, “No, I’m not going. I have court. I have family. I’m staying here. I have a work permit. I’m legal. Why the hell do you guys have me here? You’re not deporting me. I’m not going anywhere.”
The third time they came in, they did not even ask him. They brought a whole SWAT unit — they looked like SWAT — and they just picked him up and took his belongings, and we did not see him again.
Heisel: Did you get any news while you were in detention?
Juarez Zeferino: Yeah, they had TVs. They had three TVs on the wall. One was fully Spanish, the others were in English. We did watch a lot of the news. I think one of the hardest parts of the news that I saw, personally, was when ICE and the sheriff departments and other law enforcement, the army, showed up at a farm field in Camarillo, California, where they were chasing farmworkers there. I was just picturing myself in that field. That’s exactly the kind of field I work in, the berry field, where my family works in, where my sibling works in. I just, the fear, the frustration just got into me all at once, seeing all this on the news. That the army was being part of this. Days after, we learned that a farmworker passed away while he was up on the roof and something happened. Anyway, the news we got was on the TV. We didn’t get the full detail on it. We didn’t have ways to dig deep into (news stories) but it was very hard and heartbreaking to see that farmworkers were getting chased in the field.
I was on a phone call with a couple of folks where I was asking for updates. Folks that were visiting me were giving me updates, and I have been hearing a lot of farmworkers being chased in the field where they were working, and also construction workers. It’s gonna have a huge impact on the economy. I mean, we all know that in the whole U.S. there’s a shortage of living space. By rounding up construction workers you’re only gonna make that problem worse. By rounding up farm workers you’re only going to depend more on imports or use your own local grown food. The price is just going to go way way up. Nothing the administration is doing will be helpful to the community at large.
There was a brief moment where I also was a construction worker. I did foundations, mostly in Seattle, for about a year. I feel like, just seeing those people getting chased, or getting rounded up, I could see myself getting chased in those places, too.
Heisel: When you were in Tacoma did you meet anybody else from Whatcom County while you were there?
Juarez Zeferino: Well I met a couple, 37 roofers. I’m not sure if you guys heard about those. There were three that arrived in my unit. The day that they got picked up two of them got deported. One of them, the same thing that happened with my bond case happened to him. His bond was set at $7,500. The judge — the same judge that I had was his judge — said, “No jurisdiction to grant the bond” so he was stuck in there, too.
His next court hearing was I believe August 16 or 14, I have no idea. He’s also losing hope in getting any justice, and getting released back in Bellingham, where he lived with his family. I’ve also met many folks from Lynden, farmworkers from Lynden that were on their way to work or driving from work to their house, getting picked up. They were just telling us, “They picked me up in my work clothes. I was all dirty.” Definitely saw a lot of folks from Skagit and Whatcom, and many, many folks from other states.
This story was originally published August 26, 2025 at 12:23 AM.
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