***AUDIO HERE; PHOTOS and B-ROLL HERE***
Burlington, WA— Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, met with farmworkers, advocates, and community members in Burlington to listen to their concerns amid a recent spike in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity—including large-scale raids and the detention of local activists and leaders—in Northwest Washington, particularly in Whatcom and Skagit counties.
Joining Senator Murray for the meeting were: Don McMoran, Director of WSU Skagit County Extension; Rosalinda Guillen, Founder of Community-to-Community Development; Liz Darrow, Participatory Democracy Program Coordinator at Community-to-Community Development; Manuel Reta, President of the Northwest Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Gilberto Estrada, Property Manager at the Housing Authority of Skagit County; Jose Ramirez, President of Familias Unidas por la Justicia; Edgar Franks, Political Director at Familias Unidas por la Justicia; and a number of immigrant farmworkers and field workers from the community—including Beatriz Godinez, a field worker whose partner Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a farmworker and advocate for farmworkers’ rights, was arrested in Sedro Wolley on March 25th while dropping Beatriz off at work at a tulip field. ICE agents smashed Lelo’s window to detain him, he was then taken to an ICE facility in Ferndale before being transported to the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) in Tacoma, where he has been held since. In another recent high-profile immigration enforcement action, on April 2nd, officers from multiple federal law enforcement agencies detained 37 workers at Mount Baker Roofing in Bellingham.
“Washington state’s amazing crops, like apples and cherries don’t just get to the store by magic. Tulips don’t just pick themselves. There is a lot of hard work, skill, and dedicated workers who bring our crops from farms to families. Farmworkers are a part of our economy and part of our communities, and we owe them gratitude, good wages, fair treatment, and safe work environments,” said Senator Murray. “There are so many ways Trump’s policies are going to hurt our workers—from gutting worker safety, to tariffs hurting the entire sector, to slashing investments in rural communities. But I have been especially alarmed by the surge in aggressive ICE raids. The stories from the past few months, across the country and right here in Washington state, are heartbreaking and chilling: people being mistreated by border officials and ICE agents, heartbreaking family deportations, and more.”
“I firmly believe enforcing our immigration laws does not mean forsaking our bedrock principles like due process or ignoring our common sense and wasting crucial resources by targeting law-abiding people who pose no threat to public safety,” Senator Murray continued. “But that’s exactly what Trump is doing—violating the Constitution, ignoring the courts, and trampling the fundamental values we hold dear as a country to do it. It’s blatantly unlawful, and more than that it is cruel. This is creating so much pain and terror in our communities. It’s separating families, scaring workers, and emboldening racism. Our farmworkers don’t deserve to be treated like criminals—they deserve respect. And I will do everything in my power to lift up your voices, fight for your communities, and hold this administration to account.”
“Alfredo is my partner… I miss him and I love him, so we want your help,” said Beatriz Godinez, a farmworker whose partner Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino was arrested in Sedro Wolley on March 25th while dropping Beatriz off at work at a tulip field. Lelo is currently being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) in Tacoma Tacoma. Beatriz shared her story with the help of a translator. “ICE came and broke his window and pushed him against the car and were really rough with him, and put them in their ICE car… Lelo wants to be free so he can take care of his brothers and sisters and work so they can study… [Lelo] says that when he gets out, he wants to continue doing his work in the community and with the union, and he’s really hoping that he can get bond to be free to continue that.”
“In Washington state, we have taken a lot of leadership as an organization and other Latino voters and participants in the state of Washington, along with Familias Unidas por la Justicia to improve conditions for farmworkers across the state. And we also took leadership in the passage of a bill that created an H-2A Oversight Committee, which we are the only state in the nation that’s trying to provide any kind of oversight and enforcement on this. This relates to the well being and job security of farmworkers in the state, but also protection for the H-2A program which is a very abusive program,” said Rosalinda Guillen, Founder of Community-to-Community Development. “We’ve been overseeing immigration rights and justice for over 20 years. We’ve never seen it like this. It is very aggressive, and we are seeing that Homeland Security is rooting itself in our counties. The numbers of H-2A agents, ICE agents present and the border patrol, and the way that they’re implementing the administration’s removal plan, it’s disrespectful, undignified and plain just not following due process…Because we believe, as I’m sure you know, this isn’t over yet, this is going to continue. And the lack of due process is really concerning all of us in the state of Washington, especially because, you know, we’re a state that did not come out in support of the current administration, so we think that we are being targeted in these two counties specifically because of some of the work of the farmworker union and other proactive organizations supporting due process and democracy in this in the state of Washington.”
“Everything we do is important to this area. We do the pruning, the picking of all the strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, the cucumbers,” said Jose Ramirez, a farmworker and the President of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, who shared his story with the help of a translator. “We don’t want to be in fear. We’re sad about what happened with Alfredo, and I’ve known Alfredo since he started working in the field when he was 12 years old, and even to this day, he still works in the field. On top of that, he’s also still organizing workers. So, him being detained brings a lot of sadness to us, because the only thing that we’re doing here is nothing bad—we’re working and we’re trying to put our families first and take care of them. We don’t feel comfortable just trying to live our lives. And I can tell you about my own personal experience. Just a couple of days ago, I was getting ready to go to work, and outside of my apartment, I saw two unmarked cars that we think were ICE, in this parking lot. So that’s where I talked to my cousin, who also lives in the same apartment, and told them that we shouldn’t go to work that day. We had to lose that day of work. That’s eight hours of work that and wages that we don’t get, and we on top of that, we already don’t make enough money. So we just lost the day because we felt that, had we stepped out, ICE was going to get us. and we stepped out… We have 600 members in peak season, 500 to 600 families, that’s what I see. I don’t want ICE to come and start separating families. When I see workers in the field, in any field, I don’t see how they call us criminals—I don’t see that. You see people that are there just harvesting and feeding the world, not just trying to make ends meet or, you know, working, but the people that are there harvesting food and doing everything for bettering the world.”
“What happened with Lelo we feel was done intentionally to silence farm workers and leaders,” said Edgar Franks, Political Director at Familias Unidas por la Justicia. “Familias Unidas has been one of the unions that has been the most outspoken throughout the state and the country on issues on immigration, on labor, on various issues, on climate. And we feel that, because of that outspokenness, that they might be—the leadership might be a potential risk for being targeted for political reasons. You know, I think that throughout the years, the union has won many battles, political battles. You know, we got a Supreme Court hearing in the state that, for the first time, gave workers the right to paid rest breaks. We got overtime for farm workers here, we passed heat and smoke rules for farmworkers and agriculture workers, emergency COVID rules. All these things were done because of the union… So we feel that those things [that] really make the union leadership as effective as they are, also puts them in a dangerous situation. So we are asking for any kind of protection that can be done to give the workers and that security that they’ll be able to go work, fight for justice, and also be able to go back home to their families at the end of the day, just like everybody else.”
“Skagit County Agriculture is in a very difficult position in 2025. Nationwide, farm bankruptcies are up 55 percent in 2024 and many will not survive without everyone working together, including farm labor,” said Don McMoran, Director of WSU Skagit County Extension.
Senator Murray has championed comprehensive and humane immigration reform throughout her Senate career, repeatedly pushing for legislative solutions that would offer a fair pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America, including Dreamers, farmworkers, and those with Temporary Protected Status. She has long worked on legislative efforts to bring dignity and humanity to our immigration system—from protecting the health and safety of immigrant workers, to recognizing and bolstering America’s historical commitment to refugees and asylum seekers and more. She was outspoken in opposition to the Laken Riley Act, arguing it threatened to drastically undermine civil liberties and divert resources from detaining true threats to public safety.
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