September Arrest, Deportation Of Firefighter Shows The Administration Just Wants Brown People Gone

from the only-so-long-before-the-railcars-start-rolling dept

I’ve expended far too many words stating the obvious: the Trump administration’s deportation program isn’t interested in removing criminals. It’s only interested in removing people who aren’t white. That’s why it vets visa applicants for “anti-American” social media posts while throwing the immigration door wide open for any white people seeking to escape the “persecution” they face in post-apartheid South Africa.

And that’s why so many people being arrested and deported don’t fit the profile of the “worst of the worst.” There simply aren’t enough criminal immigrants in America. Too much of our crime is home-grown and even if you’re a racist who thinks Black people are skewing the data, the data still shows white people commit crime more frequently than immigrants.

Back in September, federal officers rolled up on a fire crew in Washington state. Washington is already on the list of states Trump doesn’t like. The fact that these firefighters were on loan from Oregon — a state Trump vehemently (to the point of martial law) doesn’t like — surely factored into this equation.

After hassling a bunch of people just trying to keep a wildfire from spreading, the collective of federal officers only managed to secure two arrests. One of those was Jose Cruz-Estrada, who had been working as a firefighter since 2019. Officers arrested him and deported him to Mexico. In defense of its raid on firefighters, DHS said this:

The two illegal aliens apprehended were NOT firefighters. The two contracted work crews questioned on the day of their arrests were not even assigned to actively fight the fire; they were there in a support role, cutting logs into firewood. The firefighting response remained uninterrupted the entire time. No active firefighters were even questioned, and U.S. Border Patrol’s actions did not prevent or interfere with any personnel actively engaged in firefighting efforts.

They were firefighters. Just because they weren’t on the fire line didn’t mean they weren’t doing work to support firefighting efforts. This statement also lied about Cruz-Estrada’s role in firefighting, which involved more than this alleged response to a Bureau of Land Management investigation into the contractor’s hiring practices.

Once it became clear Cruz-Estrada was not just some migrant hastily hired to handle a wildfire, the DHS decided to amp up its deliberately misleading narrative. It issued a press release that had this to say about the firefighter (emphasis in the original):

Jose Bertin Cruz-Estrada, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, past charges include the delivery and selling of methamphetamine. Border Patrol previously encountered this criminal illegal alien 15 times. Cruz-Estrada has a final order of removal from April 2015 and was last removed from the United States on February 27, 2016. He chose to disregard our laws and illegally re-enter the country again.

That’s the DHS skewing the facts to pretend a person, who not only runs his own lawn care business but has also handled supervisory roles in fire response teams, is a hardened criminal. According to the Guardian’s reporting, Cruz-Estrada has been a “squad boss and incident commander” since beginning his firefighting career. Here’s what actually happened, in far more detail than the DHS would ever be willing to share.

[I]n 2013, he got caught up in the criminal legal system after a local drug bust. Officers, records show, were not focused on Cruz-Estrada, but rather a resident of a home where Cruz-Estrada was hanging out. An informant bought drugs from the resident and secretly filmed the encounter; police accused Cruz-Estrada of being a “lookout”, because he was seen leaving the home and “walking around the surrounding area”, a prosecutor wrote.

Cruz-Estrada was charged with a litany of serious offenses, including racketeering and unlawful delivery of methamphetamine, but the charges were dismissed in exchange for him pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver meth, a charge stemming from the “lookout” allegations.

The conviction carried no prison time.

This is the evidence the DHS thinks is so damning: someone was once accused of serious drug crimes more than a decade ago and served no time in prison for the single charge the government secured via a plea deal. Since then, he has worked for firefighting crews when not running his own business, which he incorporated in 2022.

But fuck him, I guess, for not trying to obtain citizenship during Trump’s first term. Cruz-Estrada re-entered the US illegally in 2019, which wasn’t exactly the best time to be asking for asylum or trying to fast-track a citizenship application. But he went back to firefighting, contributing to several major wildfire-fighting efforts over the next six years.

And yet, this government continues to insist this is exactly the kind of person the United States should have fewer of. When asked for a comment on this recent article, the foul front-mouth of the DHS decided to spew the usual bullshit, letting everyone who doesn’t respond to racist dog whistling know that this administration is doing this to Cruz-Estrada because it simply doesn’t like people from Mexico:

[DHS Asst. Secretary Tricia McLaughlin] said the border patrol had “encountered” Cruz-Estrada 15 times over the years and again cited his past criminal charges without noting they were dismissed. “Once again, the Guardian is debasing itself by peddling sob stories from a criminal illegal alien … Stop publishing criminal illegal aliens’ testimonies as the truth.”

That’s the sort of thing you say when you have no real argument to make. You re-read the jacket, gloss over the lack of a serious conviction, refuse to acknowledge the fact that the offense occurred well over a decade ago, and insult the people asking you to explain your actions. This person should not be allowed to issue a Teams meeting invitation, much less serve as the underboss for Kristi “I Kill Pets” Noem.

Cruz-Estrada is the sort of person who actually makes America great: a human being as capable of failure as the rest of us, but willing to turn his life around and be a positive force in this nation — something far too few US natives are interested in doing. Migrants never get to rest on their laurels. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd remains kicked back on the laurel lounger it scored at an asset forfeiture auction, applauding an administration that is deliberately destroying the American ideals these shitheels claim to love so much it might occasionally mean having to drink something other than Bud Light for a few weeks.

Filed Under: border patrol, bureau of land management, cbp, dhs, ice, jose cruz estrada, mass deportation, trump administration, washington