Federal immigration agents arrested 37 people Wednesday during a raid at a roofing business in northern Washington.
Officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit and Customs and Border Protection arrived at Mt. Baker Roofing’s warehouse around 7:30 a.m. In Bellingham, a city near the Canadian border.
“They (law enforcement) arrived wielding their guns like they were going to shoot us, like we were criminals,” Tomas Fuerte told Cascadia Daily News, speaking in Spanish. “They corralled us into a room in the back of the building. They had a list and pictures of everyone who was undocumented and took them away.”
The people detained were taken away in two buses, Fuerte said, adding that he has never seen such a raid in his 12 years at the company.
ICE spokesperson David Yost said in a statement that the officers executed a federal search warrant “based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the unlawful employment of aliens without legal work authorization in violation of federal law.”
The 37 people who were arrested had “fraudulently represented their immigration status and submitted fraudulent documents and/or information to seek employment,” Yost said.
Mt. Baker Roofing said in an afternoon statement that it was “fully cooperating with the authorities while also ensuring that our employees are treated fairly and respectfully under the law.”
ICE says it made 32,809 arrests in President Donald Trump’s first 50 days in office. That was a daily average of 656, up from 311 during the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30.
Such numbers, while higher than those seen during the Biden administration, are far from the mass deportations that Trump campaigned on. So far the president has avoided the large-scale factory and office raids that characterized his first term and that of a Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, but there have been scattered and smaller operations.
Criminal charges against business owners are extremely rare, though fines are common.