FERNDALE, Wash.—At 7:21 a.m. on Tuesday, March 25, a prominent immigration activist, Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, known by the community as “Lelo,” was arrested in Sedro-Woolley, Wash., by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, while driving his partner to her workplace.
Lelo is a volunteer organizer with Community to Community, or C2C, a local food justice organization and has been serving with the network since he was 12 years old. He’s now 25 and serves as a union member farmworker for Familias Unidas por la Justicia.
When ICE agents pulled him over, Lelo exercised his rights by asking for an arrest warrant. The agents then broke his car window and took him into custody. He was escorted to the ICE detention center in Ferndale at 5200 Industrial Place.
By 10 a.m., protesters from C2C gathered at the four entrances of Pacific Park Plaza in Ferndale, standing on the sides of busy roadways parallel to Interstate 5 North, roughly 300 yards from where Lelo was being held.
“People need to know that this is a politically motivated assault on Lelo’s rights,” said Tara Villalba, a colleague of Lelo’s who works for C2C. “Lelo has immigrant rights… Immigrants do have rights. Whether we are documented or not, we have rights. And what people need to know is that they are going after Lelo because of (his) political bravery and courage organizing farm workers.”
Under the U.S. Department of Justice, “Title 8 U.S.C. § 1324(b) authorizes immigration officers to seize, without a warrant, conveyances used to transport illegal aliens.” Salish Current was unable to confirm Lelo’s immigration status, but he did not come to the U.S. as an adult.
While agents may not have needed a warrant for his arrest, ICE policy “requires a finding of probable cause to believe the subject is a removable alien before a detainer may be issued.” This is typically after a court has convicted them of a crime and when they pose a public safety or national security threat.
According to Liz Darrow, the participatory democracy program coordinator at C2C, there is no evidence to suggest that Lelo has been involved in any criminal activity.
In a press release, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., reiterated this, addressing the arrest of Lelo and other unidentified community members.
“In arrests across the country, the Trump administration and ICE have claimed 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,” the release read. “Immigrating to the United States is legal. Organizing is legal.”
Throughout the day, cars whizzed by and honked their horns in support. Around 4 p.m., a black pickup truck with its windows down drove along Smith Road, blasting Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby.”
Villalba, a woman who works closely with Lelo on the Immigrant Advisory Board, was protesting his arrest at the Smith Road entrance.
“He’s part of all the organizing that happens in the farmworker community,” Villalba said. “As a worker, he worked with daffodil and tulip cutters, and he works at Sakuma.”
Lelo’s supporters’ main fear was that he would be sent to the ICE Northwest Processing Center in Tacoma.
“Our goal is to have him be released on bail and be able to actually go through due process instead of just being taken — disappeared — and us not knowing what happens to him afterward,” Villalba said.
For the remainder of the day, protesters stood on the road’s grassy edge, hiking along the steep, muddy shoulder to move between the plaza’s entrances.
When Faviola Lopez and her coworkers at the United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW, Local 3000 heard the news of Lelo’s detainment, they hurried to join the protest.
“We are seeing an attack on union leaders who are in the immigrant community. We won’t stand for workers being attacked,” Lopez said. “We should all stand together to make sure people’s rights are not infringed on, and we all have our right to dignity in our workplace and in housing without being scared for our own safety.”
According to Villalba and Darrow, a community attorney attempted to reach Lelo inside the detention center at approximately 3:15 p.m. but was turned away.
“The business hours posted were 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and so they wouldn’t let the person in to try to figure out what was going on,” Darrow said.
At other ICE centers, visiting hours are determined based on “detainee classification.”
“To be totally clear, Lelo’s not a criminal,” Darrow said. “He doesn’t have any kind of records, so he’s not a dangerous detainee — but there was no way for his family to visit him in Whatcom County.”
Craig, a Western Washington University student, learned about Lelo’s detainment through the Western Academic Workers Union. Holding a sign that said, “Workers stand with workers,” he said he believes that detainment is part of a broader issue of coordinated attacks on the farmworkers’ union.
“It’s important for workers to stand with workers, no matter where they come from, what they look like, or how they identify,” Craig said. “Corporations and the government serve the employing class, not the working class. This is an attack on organized union labor.”
Protesters stayed onsite until 4:45 p.m., when C2C leadership announced that Lelo had been transported to the detention center in Tacoma. The group’s reactions ranged from raw to confused, with many turning to each other for comfort.
Community groups such as UFCW Local 3000 have released statements demanding Lelo be released.
“He needs to go back to his family and his community,” Villalba said.
Other local organizations, including C2C and Familias Unidas por la Justicia, are urging community members to stand with Lelo by calling the state Attorney General’s office.
“If (people) call, they should ask for Lelo to be released and for them to keep their hands off of Washington state,” Villalba said.
The Whatcom chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice organized a group call to the Washington Attorney General’s Office and the Washington State Governor’s Office Wednesday evening.
For many, Lelo’s arrest feels like a deliberate blow to free speech.
“This is absolutely targeted,” Darrow said. “I think that they did this because they want people to be afraid to stand up to tyranny. I think that our city and our county have failed immigrants here, and the rest of us are losing people who are part of our family and part of our lives. I want people to question why someone like Lelo will be taken from our community.”
This article originally appeared in the Salish Current, a non-partisan, non-profit, online local news organization serving Whatcom, San Juan, and Skagit counties in Washington State by reporting local news with independence and strict journalistic integrity, and by providing fact-based information and a forum for civil commentary.
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