https://www.kuow.org/stories/ice-detains-farmworker-activist-in-northwest-washington-state
Rosalinda Guillén, a farmworker and political activist in Skagit County, said Juarez is a 25-year-old farmworker and union organizer, and he was detained while driving his partner to her job in the flower fields.
“He tried to defend himself by not speaking to them and refusing to get out of the car, and they broke his car window,” Guillén told KUOW.
“He doesn’t have a criminal record, and we think that they stopped him because of his leadership, because of his activism,” Guillén added. “We’re trying to get him out.”
Immigration records confirm Juarez had a standing deportation order from 2018. The Bellingham Herald reported in 2015 that he was first sent to the Tacoma detention center in June of that year, when he was pulled over by police for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. The police then called immigration enforcement.
Juarez received Whatcom County’s Dotty Dale Youth Peacemaker Award in 2023 for his volunteer work and worker organizing in three languages — English, Spanish, and Mixteco.
“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,” Rep. Larsen said in a statement. “Immigrating to the United States is legal. Union organizing is legal.”
