This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 28 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Authorities in Washington have been fighting the state’s largest wildfire nonstop for almost two months. Since early July, the Bear Gulch Fire has burned nearly 9,000 acres, and officials say it is only 13% contained. In fact, it’s so big that the state has to rely on contract firefighters.
But on Wednesday, one group of firefighters who were battling the blaze had to take a three-hour timeout from their work after their camp was raided by Border Patrol officials.
Video of the raid shows dozens of fire contractors being lined up and asked to show their IDs. Border Patrol officers ultimately arrested two of the firefighters, whom they believed were in the country illegally.
We are an interconnected society of human beings who depend on each other to survive and thrive.
In a statement to NBC News, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that the arrests followed a criminal investigation into two companies contracted to assist with fighting the fire.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement on X, which said the two men “apprehended were NOT firefighters” but worked in a “support role, cutting logs into firewood.” Adding: “The firefighting response remained uninterrupted the entire time.”
According to reporting from The Seattle Times, one of the firefighters told the men they were not allowed to take video of the incident. “You risked your life out here to save the community,” that firefighter told the Times. “This is how they treat us.”
Another firefighter told the paper that “they were denied the chance to say goodbye to the detained crew members.”
“I asked them if his (family) can say goodbye to him because they’re family, and they’re just ripping them away,” the firefighter said. “And this is what he said, ‘You need to get the [blank] out of here. I’m gonna make you leave.’” As the Times notes, “It is unusual for federal border agents to make arrests during the fighting of an active fire, especially in a remote area.” Earlier this year, Donald Trump rescinded a Biden-era policy that barred immigration enforcement at so-called sensitive locations, which applied to natural disasters. Trump and his supporters constantly push this idea that you either care about America or you care about immigrants, not both. But that is a racist fantasy. We are an interconnected society of human beings who depend on each other to survive and thrive. There’s no neat line between “Americans” and “foreigners.” We just have neighbors and communities. But Trumpworld says that’s bunk, that there’s just two sides. Trumpworld says that to “Make America Great Again,” you need armed federal officers roaming streets, businesses and Home Depot parking lots in search of people to disappear. And now you need raids on camps of firefighters as they literally battle the largest wildfire in the American Northwest. It appears Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and their ilk are willing to burn the country to the ground if that’s what it takes, all so they can rule over the ashes.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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