The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained 25-year-old activist farmworker Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino Tuesday morning whereas he was driving his accomplice to work at a tulip bulb farm in Mount Vernon.
At 7:23 am, Zeferino known as Rosalinda Guillen, a long-time organizer and founding father of Neighborhood to Neighborhood (C2C). Within the background, she might hear Zeferino’s accomplice crying as Zeferino instructed ICE officers to depart her alone, and that she had nothing to do with this, earlier than the chaotic cellphone name abruptly ended.
Guillen didn’t hear from Zeferino once more till 8:57 am, when he known as from an unmarked ICE facility in Ferndale, the identical nondescript warehouse he and different activists uncovered years in the past, and the place greater than 100 folks would demand his freedom that afternoon.
Zeferino spoke rapidly, she says: ICE had additionally detained his uncle and one other man from Mount Vernon. He protested when guards instructed him he’d be transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Middle in Tacoma after which deported. In accordance with the ICE Detainee Locator System, he’s now in Tacoma. ICE didn’t return a request for remark.
Guillen and others suspect the berry picker and union organizer, beloved by Indigenous farmworkers throughout the state, was focused for his political activism. Not not like Jeanette Vizguerra, the immigrant rights activist ICE picked up throughout her break at a Goal outdoors Denver, or Mahmoud Khalil, a pupil, inexperienced card holder and Palestinian activist at Columbia College, shipped to Louisiana after ICE arrested him in his university-owned condominium in New York Metropolis.
“We’re frightened they’re going to deport him to El Salvador, Gitmo, or these different locations which might be horrific,” to not Mexico, Guillen says. “This administration is simply punitive and imply. They’re merciless.”
An Indigenous Mixteco immigrant from Mexico, Zeferino began organizing at 14, only a child selecting berries at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Burlington, which is how he met Edgar Franks, political director of the Indigenous farmworkers union Households Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ). In 2016, after years of organizing, the union reached a historic collective bargaining settlement for greater than 500 staff.
When requested what Zeferino had achieved for farmworkers in Washington, Franks exhaled and clicked his tongue, as if undecided the place to start out. He says Zeferino helped set up new state requirements to guard farmworkers from grueling warmth within the fields and had a hand in a 2021 state regulation guaranteeing extra time pay for them. Zeferino has fought for fundamental enhancements like added restrooms. He’s coached staff on tips on how to speak to lawmakers, and is fast to leap on the picket line with first time strikers to point out them the way it’s achieved.
On January 21, the day after President Donald Trump took workplace, Zeferino was in Olympia, marching farmworkers throughout the capitol grounds on a mission to convey District 40 lawmakers to a farmer’s “tribunal” the place staff would share the injustices they face.
Even Mixteco staff who aren’t in his union and don’t need to be part of one belief Zeferino, who’s fluent in Mixteco, Spanish, and English. They name for his recommendation when they need higher wages, when the boss yells at them, once they want somebody to take a seat with them in court docket, or to translate on the DMV. If the group calls Zeferino, Zeferino picks up the cellphone, Guillen and Franks say. However for all his soft-spoken and humble studiousness, he’s nonetheless a younger man, Franks says.
“For me, he’s nonetheless at all times a little bit child,” he says. “He likes Child Yoda, he likes to look at animated movies. We went to New York for this convention on employee rights; on his free time, he went to go watch Kung Fu Panda.”
In 2023, the Whatcom Peace & Justice Middle gave Zeferino the Dotty Dale Youth Peacemaker award for his work. Board member Josh Cerretti met Zeferino in 2015, shortly after he was arrested by Bellingham Police and turned over to ICE. (Zeferino’s household alleged racial profiling and sued town, later settling for $100,000). Zeferino’s arrest was an assault on all farmworkers in Washington, he says.
Cerretti famous that Zeferino was on town of Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board till October, when the council dissolved it (after suspending its month-to-month conferences that January). The advisory board had advisable town construct a useful resource heart for immigrants in Whatcom County, which Cerretti, Franks and Guillen agreed would’ve been good to have proper now.
Michael Lilliquist, one of many two dissenting votes towards axing the advisory board, wrote in an electronic mail that Zeferino’s arrest had upset him. Trump was concentrating on virtually each immigrant, no matter immigration standing or felony report. The chance that enforcement is getting used to stifle political dissent “provides a daunting further layer,” he wrote. “I’m frightened about Lelo’s future.”
The Trump administration has gone after immigrants of any authorized standing. In 2015, The Bellingham Herald reported Zeferino had utilized for DACA, a program to supply undocumented immigrants who arrive within the US as youngsters work permits and safety from deportation. The Stranger was not in a position to verify his present immigration standing.
Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund mentioned in a press release that town will monitor his case alongside federal representatives.
Washington Senator Patty Murray mentioned in a press release that she’s intently monitoring the arrests of Zeferino and a number of other others in Northwest Washington, together with Seattle healthcare employee and inexperienced card holder Lewelyn Dixon.
Congressman Rick Larsen (D-2) mentioned in a press release that the Trump administration and ICE have claimed they’re “going after the worst of the worst,” however there was no indication Zeferino and others detained on Tuesday represented that.
“Immigrating to the US is authorized,” he wrote. “Union organizing is authorized.”
