TACOMA — A Washington Congresswoman says that she was illegally denied entry into an immigration detention center where two men were being held after they were detained by U.S Border Patrol while working at the Bear Gulch wildfire this week, following claims they are illegally present in the country.
The two men, who were government contractors working at the fire, were detained after federal agents flagged them while verifying the identities of the members of the wildland firefighter crew. DHS alleges that both men were in the country illegally and that one had a prior order of removal.
RELATED: Border Patrol agents arrest 2 members of Bear Gulch firefighting team
U.S Representative Emily Randall, of Washington’s Sixth District, stated that on Saturday, during an unannounced visit to the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) in Tacoma, she was denied entry, despite having legal protections to do so.
“I cited the statute multiple times to make sure that they understood they were breaking the law, and they said, ‘Well, your previous visits have not been on a weekend.’”
Randall says she had been to the NWIPC three times in 2025, with two of those visits being pre-planned and one of them being unannounced. Each of those times, she was allowed entry.
The statute she is referencing is Section 527 of the 2024 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act. It reads in part:
“SEC. 527. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Homeland Security by this Act may be used to prevent any of the following persons from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens…”
In addition to:
“(b) Nothing in this section may be construed to require a Member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility described in subsection (a) for the purpose of conducting oversight.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded with the following statement, in regards to our questions about why Rep. Randall was not allowed entry on Saturday:
“Here are the facts. As ICE law enforcement have seen a surge in assaults, disruptions, and obstructions to enforcement — including by Members of Congress themselves — any requests to tour processing centers and field offices must be approved by the Secretary of Homeland Security. These requests must be part of legitimate congressional oversight activities. ICE officers have seen an 830% surge in assaults.
“As for visits to detention facilities, requests should be made with sufficient time to prevent interference with the President’s Article II authority to oversee executive department functions—a week is sufficient to ensure no intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority. To protect the President’s Article II authority, any request to shorten that time must be approved by the Secretary.”
Despite not gaining entry, Randall still wanted to make her position known about what she believed was wrongful detention.
“To arrest individuals and waylay folks for 3 hours or more, who are involved in fuel management, involved in the great machine of fighting this wildland fire, is disgusting.”
In an X post on Friday, DHS claimed that the two men “were not even assigned to actively fight the fire; [but rather] they were there in a support role, cutting logs into firewood.”
Randall pushed back on this notion, saying that having been to the wildfire zone herself, she knows how important the mitigation of fuels is towards the containment effort.
“It’s a lot of fuel management, a lot of trying to keep the wood from becoming fire fuel, and it takes a lot of bodies to do that work,” said Randall.
In the meantime, Randall says many questions remain from her and her congressional colleagues about DHS, U.S Customs and Border Protection, as well as the Bureau of Land Management, about their operation, particularly due to a 2021 DHS policy, which restricted immigration enforcement within disaster response zones.
“We have asked Secretary Noem if they have made any policy changes related to that.”
It’s one of numerous answers that Randall and others are looking for from those three agencies, prompting her and dozens more to draft a congressional letter to the heads of those three agencies on Friday.
KOMO News is still waiting for a response from DHS on the 2021 policy and where that stands in the administration’s current immigration enforcement landscape.
As of the writing of this article, the Bear Gulch Fire has burned upwards of 9,232 acres, with 13% containment, according to InciWeb.
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