Ice ‘politically targeted' farm worker activist Juarez Zeferino, colleagues say

The Guardian

a day ago

Farm worker activist Alfredo 'Lelo' Juarez Zeferino, 25, was driving his partner to her job on a tulip farm north of Seattle one March morning when they were pulled over by an unmarked car. A plainclothes agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) emerged and shattered Juarez Zeferino's front window before handcuffing him, his partner said.
The officer drove Juarez Zeferino to a nondescript warehouse – the same one he and other activists had years ago discovered is an unmarked Ice holding facility. After his 25 March detention, dozens gathered outside to demand his release.
Instead, he was transferred to the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he has been held ever since.
Officially, Juarez Zeferino's arrest was based on a deportation order. But the activist's detention comes as the Trump administration has launched an aggressive crackdown against its perceived political enemies, including both immigrants and labor organizers.
'We believe, no question, that he was a target,' said Rosalinda Guillen, veteran farm worker organizer and founder of Community to Community Development, where Juarez Zeferino volunteered.
The young organizer has played an instrumental role in securing protections for Washington farm workers, including strengthened statewide heat protections for outdoor laborers mandating water breaks when temperatures top 80F, enshrined in 2023. In 2021, he and other activists also won a law guaranteeing farm workers overtime pay. And in 2019, advocacy from Juarez Zeferino and other campaigners about exploitation in the H-2A guest worker program prompted Washington to create the nation's first-ever oversight committee for foreign workers.
'He's a very humble person, very quiet but yet very determined and willing to go to whatever extent to get victory for his people,' said Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farm worker union which Juarez Zeferino helped found.
His successful track record has earned him renown in labor and immigrant justice circles across the country. Franks believes it also made him a 'political target' for Trump.
'We just have to look at the record of everybody that has been targeted by the Trump administration, from the students at Columbia to [the detention of immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra] in Colorado,' he said. 'There's already a track of people that have been targeted to silence them and to make sure that the people that look up to them get silenced.'
Reached for comment, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said that allegations of Ice politically targeting Juarez Zeferino were 'categorically FALSE', calling him 'an illegal alien from Mexico with a final order of removal from a judge'.
'The only thing that makes someone a target of Ice is if they are in the United States illegally,' she said.
She said the activist, whom she called 'Juan Juarez-Ceferino,' refused to comply with Ice during his arrest, and that officers used the 'minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation' and protect themselves.
In court, a DHS attorney also said Juarez Zeferino was noncompliant during his arrest, and claimed he was a flight risk because he had previously missed a court hearing.
His lawyer Larkin VanDerhoef denied that his client was a flight risk, saying he was unaware of his missed court date. In court, he noted that Juarez Zeferino had received dozens of letters, demonstrating that he is a 'positive force'.
He said Juarez Zeferino complied with the officers who arrested him. 'Lelo had opened his window to talk to officers and was asking to see their warrant for his arrest when they smashed his window,' he said, adding that a group of officers from not only Ice, but also border patrol, homeland security investigations, and the Drug Enforcement Administration worked together to arrest him.
Juarez Zeferino's detention has sparked concern among other immigrant workers fighting for better labor conditions, and since his arrest, others have also been detained. In April armed Customs and Border Protection agents raided a Vermont dairy farm and arrested eight immigrant laborers who were involved with a labor rights campaign. Last month, Ice also arrested farm worker leaders in New York.
'This is a good strategy to squelch union organizing as well as farm worker advocacy, but it is horrifying to us that some of the people who make the lowest salaries in our country are being deported even as they provide the necessary workforce to keep our country fed,' said Julie Taylor, executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization which supports farm worker organizing.
Juarez Zeferino was arrested on the grounds of a 2018 deportation order. It stemmed from a 2015 traffic stop by Bellingham, Washington, police officers who then turned him over to Ice.
After the stop, Juarez Zeferino – then a minor – was detained for less than 24 hours. He later sued Bellingham and its police department saying that his arrest was the result of racial profiling; the city settled for $100,000.
The farm worker activist's friends and legal counsel said he was unaware of the deportation order, which was mailed to an address Juarez Zeferino provided but then bounced back to the government.
'He wasn't in hiding,' said Franks. 'He was out in the open, doing media and serving on city commissions.'
His lawyer VanDerhoef successfully had the order reopened in April this year – just one day before Juarez Zeferino was due to be placed on a deportation flight.
But in May, an immigration court judge ruled that she had no jurisdiction to grant bond to Juarez Zeferino – a decision VanDerhoef quickly appealed.
VanDerhoef said the judge's ruling was based on an unusual legal interpretation by Tacoma judges, who routinely argue that they lack jurisdiction to issue bonds to immigrants who entered the country without a visa. He signed his client on to a class-action lawsuit focused on the issue.
He also filed a motion to terminate the case against his client. In June, a court denied the motion, so the next step will probably be to apply for asylum in the US.
'We're basically weighing what other options he has, what he can apply for,' VanDerhoef said.
Aaron Korthuis, an attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, who is representing Juarez Zeferino in the class-action lawsuit, said he did not doubt the activist was a political target.
'A lot of what this administration is doing is attempting to send a message through its arrests [and] through its removals,' he said. 'It shouldn't shock anyone that who they are targeting for arrest is part and parcel of the larger effort to intimidate, exact retribution, and send a message.'
VanDerhoef declined to comment on whether or not his client's arrest was politically motivated, but said it was unsurprising that it had sparked concern about Trump's immigration policies among other farm workers. 'The last thing I want to do is cause any more fear or panic that is already high among immigrant communities,' he said. 'But I do think this administration has shown that nothing is off the table when it comes to who they will target and also the tactics they use.'
Experts say the Trump administration has violated court norms and ignored court orders in its attacks on immigrants. The president has also made life harder for immigration attorneys, including in a memorandum claiming they engage in 'unscrupulous behavior'. And the sheer number of Ice raids conducted under his administration also makes it harder for such lawyers to do their jobs, said VanDerhoef.
In the north-east US, Ice arrests have increased so much that officials are 'running into space issues', said VanDerhoef. The immigration prison where Juarez Zeferino is being held has so far exceeded its capacity that some people have been transferred without warning to facilities in Los Angeles and Alaska.
The overcrowding also creates challenges when it comes to representation, VanDerhoef said. These days, visitation rooms are often so overbooked that he and other attorneys are facing 'half a day waits' to meet with their clients.
He worries that attorneys cannot keep up with the increase in Ice arrests. 'There are not significantly more lawyers doing this work even though there are significantly more people being detained,' he said.
Guillen, the veteran farm worker organizer, first met Juarez Zeferino in 2013, when he he was a 13-year-old who had recently arrived in the US from Mexico. He was so small that he looked more like he was 11, she said, but he was 'a hard worker' and 'fierce'.
That year, Juarez Zeferino and about 200 workers on a Washington berry farm walked off the job demanding better working conditions and pay. Over the next four years, they organized work stoppages and boycotts, with Juarez Zeferino – who speaks English, Spanish and his native Mixteco – often serving as a spokesperson.
In 2017, the workers were granted a union election, resulting in the formation of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farm worker union representing hundreds of Indigenous farm workers.
It's a 'nightmare' organization for Trump, who doesn't want to see immigrant laborers organized, said Guillen. 'These are communities that normally are marginalized, fighting for their rights and winning,' she said.
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Since Juarez Zeferino's arrest, calls for his freedom have met with an outpouring of support, Guillen said.
'All the legislators know him, and there was immediate support for him in letters and calls,' she said.
But she wishes Democrats would do more to fight for workers like him, including by trying to stop Ice arrests within Washington. 'Democrats need to be bolder,' she said.
Franks agreed, and said workers like Juarez Zeferino should obtain amnesty from Ice.
'Just a couple years ago we were essential workers and the heroes but now we're the terrorists and the criminals,' he said.
Asked if she had visited Juarez Zeferino, Guillen said, 'I can't do it.' She worries about his health and wellbeing in the facility.
Franks, too, said he was concerned that the 'already skinny' Juarez Zeferino will become malnourished while in detention. But when he has visited the young activist, he said he was 'trying to keep his spirits up'.
'He's still messing around and joking around,' he said. 'And he's like, 'when I get out, we're going to do this, we're going to do that.''
Asked what is on that to-do list, Franks said Juarez Zeferino wants to be reunited with his family. 'And he wants to get back to the struggle,' he said.