A firefighter moves hazard fuel while working on the Bear Gulch fire this summer. Many in the wildland fire community believe the leadership team managing the fire sent crews into an ambush by federal immigration agents. (Facebook/Bear Gulch Fire 2025)

Wildland firefighters were stunned when federal immigration authorities last week raided an active wildfire response in Washington state, arresting two firefighters and sidelining crews for hours.

Wildfire veterans say the operation was nearly unprecedented, a breach in longstanding protocol that federal agents don’t disrupt emergency responders to check immigration status.

Worse, many wildfire veterans believe the management team overseeing the fire crews played a key role in handing over the firefighters to immigration authorities.

Stateline spoke to nearly a dozen firefighters, agency staffers and contractors familiar with the incident, who shared their belief that the top officials assigned to the fire deployed the crews to a remote location under false pretenses so federal agents could check their immigration status. Most of them spoke privately for fear of retaliation.

The raid has reverberated among fire crews, agency leaders and contractors. Wildfire veterans say the arrests have stoked fear and distrust among firefighters on the ground. They worry that crews may be scared to deploy if they may become a target for immigration raids.

“There’s really no way [the wildfire management team] could not have been involved,” said Riva Duncan, a former wildland fire chief who served more than 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service. “We’re all talking about it. People are wondering if they go on a fire with this team, if that could happen to them.”

Since the incident became public, the wildfire world has been abuzz with anger at that team — California Interagency Incident Management Team 7. Made up of federal, state and local fire professionals, the team was assigned to oversee the response to the Bear Gulch fire, which has burned 9,000 acres in and around Olympic National Park in Washington state.

One firefighter who was present at the raid said he is convinced that Team 7 leaders sent their crews into a trap.

“I felt beyond betrayed,” said the firefighter, who requested anonymity to protect his career. “What they did was messed up. They’d been talking in their briefings about building relationships and trust. For them to say that and then go do this is mind-boggling. It boiled my blood.”

Team 7 Incident Commander Tom Clemo, in an email, declined to comment, citing an active investigation. Tom Stokesberry, the team’s public information officer, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to daily Incident Action Plans filed by Team 7 and posted online, the crews had previously been digging holding lines, working to protect structures and conducting mop-up work. The two crews targeted by federal agents had not been assigned to work together in the days leading up to the raid.

Then, on Aug. 27, both crews — workers from private companies contracted to help fight the fire — were told to deploy to a staging area where they would cut firewood for the local community. The firefighter who was present at the raid told Stateline that a division supervisor told the crews he would meet them at the site, but never showed up.

After arriving at the site, the firefighter said, the crews found piles of logs, seemingly from a timber operation. Not wanting to damage a logging company’s property, they waited for a management team leader to show up with further instructions.

After an hour, unmarked law enforcement vehicles pulled up to the site and federal officials began questioning the firefighters. Duncan, the former Forest Service firefighter, said immigration agents would not have been able to access the site without help from Team 7 leaders.

“Fire areas are officially closed, very secure and there are roadblocks,” she said. “Somebody would have had to tell these agents how to get there.”

In a news release, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said its agents assisted with an investigation led by the federal Bureau of Land Management. While the agency’s release did not mention the nature of the investigation, multiple wildfire sources said the feds claimed they had uncovered fraud on time cards submitted by the crews.

Table Rock Forestry Inc., an Oregon-based company whose crew was one of the two at the scene, was allegedly subjected to the raid due to a half-hour discrepancy on a time sheet, said Scott Polhamus, secretary of the Organization of Fire Contractors and Affiliates. Table Rock Forestry is a member of the fire contractors’ group.

Multiple wildfire veterans said that time card discrepancies are not uncommon at wildfires, where crews work long days and it’s not always clear if lunch breaks or errands in town count toward working hours. Such mix-ups are typically sorted out between organizational leaders. Calling law enforcement in such a scenario is almost unheard of.

“This is not the first time a crew has been called on the carpet for maybe padding their time a bit,” Duncan said. “You deal directly with the company. It’s just absolutely mind-boggling to treat it as a criminal issue.”

After about five minutes discussing the time card issue, according to the firefighter who was present at the raid, federal agents spent the next three hours checking each firefighter’s immigration status.

The Customs and Border Protection news release announcing the immigration arrests made no mention of time sheets or any evidence that the investigation had turned up fraud. It did state that the two companies whose crews were raided had their contracts terminated by the government.

Polhamus, with the fire contractors’ group, said that claim is false. While the crews were demobilized and sent home, the feds have not actually ended the companies’ contracts or ability to accept future deployments.

A Customs and Border Protection public affairs specialist did not immediately respond to questions about the investigation, the alleged fraud or federal agents’ coordination with Team 7.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the state’s lead wildfire response agency, said federal officials did not notify their state counterparts about the investigation.

“DNR was not informed of the incident until well after the fact,” said Ryan Rodruck, wildfire on-call public information officer with the agency.

Rodruck noted that the fire response was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service. Press officers with the Forest Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Multiple wildfire sources said the crews would not have been sent to the staging area where they were ambushed without the knowledge of top leaders on the fire’s management team.

The two crews that were raided have a diverse mix of firefighters, many of them Hispanic. One of the crews has many foreign workers who are legally in the country on H-2B visas. Duncan, the former Forest Service firefighter, said it was likely not a coincidence that two crews with many brown-skinned members were targeted in the raid.

Two of the firefighters were arrested, federal officials said, for being in the country illegally.

One of the firefighters who was arrested is represented by Innovation Law Lab, an Oregon-based legal group that defends refugees and immigrants. Isa Peña, the group’s director of strategy, said the Department of Homeland Security has not revealed the whereabouts of their client.

The firefighter, who Peña declined to name, has been in the U.S. since he was four years old and served as a firefighter for the past three years. Immigration advocates are alarmed that the raid was potentially arranged by California Interagency Incident Management Team 7, the leaders charged with overseeing the wildfire response.

“There certainly is concern if that is the case that individuals are being handed over to immigration as they’re trying to keep our communities safe,” Peña said. “Conducting immigration enforcement while brave members of our community are risking their lives to protect us is really disgusting.”

Several wildland fire veterans also noted that the raid took place on Team 7’s final day in charge of the fire response, hours before a Washington team rotated in to take command. The California team headed home and left the new team to face the media scrutiny and angry firefighters in camp.

“If you’ve got ICE teams pulling your contractors out, you’d want to cut and run as soon as you can,” Polhamus said.

On a forum for wildland fire professionals on the social media platform Reddit, many expressed anger at Team 7. Firefighters also took issue with the assertion, shared by federal immigration officials, that the raid did not disrupt firefighting operations.

“It’s total bulls***,” said Duncan, the former Forest Service firefighter. “Whoever made that statement doesn’t understand the work. To take two crews off of a fire that’s only 13% contained, that seems ridiculous at that point in a fire. That does seem very unusual.”

Many wildfire veterans said that conducting a raid at the site of an active wildfire was reckless and irresponsible.

“Having people on the line that you don’t expect to be there is an issue,” said Polhamus, with the fire contractors’ group. “When you need crews and you are taking resources to check them for immigration status, we can all think of better ways to address that.”

Duncan said she’s spoken with firefighters still assigned to the Bear Gulch fire who are disgusted with the situation and want to leave.

“The three principal wildland fire values are duty, respect, integrity,” she said. “Utmost in that is taking care of your people. If you can’t trust the people you’re working with when things get hairy, that’s a concern.”

In Washington and Oregon, elected leaders have decried the raids and are pushing for more information on the status of the firefighters who were arrested. Federal immigration officials have said little since the news release announcing the arrests.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

The coal-fired Mill Creek Generating Station operates in Kentucky last year. President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered some retiring coal plants to stay online, even as they have struggled to remain economically viable. (Photo by Liam Niemeyer/Kentucky Lantern)

Mandates from President Donald Trump’s administration to retain aging coal plants could cause a massive spike in energy costs, according to an independent analysis commissioned by several environmental groups.

Orders from the U.S. Department of Energy to save coal plants from retirement could cost ratepayers more than $3 billion per year, according to a report from Grid Strategies, a power sector consulting firm. It was carried out on behalf of Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club.

Under Trump, the agency has issued emergency orders to maintain operations at coal plants that were scheduled for retirement. While federal officials say the coal plants need to stay online to avoid blackouts, power plant owners and state regulators planned their closures because they were no longer economically viable or needed for reliability.

“DOE mandates override those well-informed decisions, inflating electric bills for homeowners and businesses and undermining the competitiveness of U.S. factories and data centers,” the Grid Strategies analysis found.

Across the country, coal plants have phased out as they’ve struggled to compete with cheaper renewables and natural gas. A 2023 analysis by Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank, found that 99% of existing U.S. coal plants “are more expensive to run than replacement by local wind, solar, and energy storage resources.”

But Trump, who has pushed to unleash more fossil fuel development and to stymie wind and solar, has ordered a retiring coal plant in Michigan to stay online, along with an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania.

“Based on the trend to date and indications that DOE has approached the owners of many retiring fossil power plants about potentially mandating their retention, DOE may attempt to mandate the retention of nearly all large fossil power plants slated for retirement between now and the end of 2028,” reads the Grid Strategies report.

The cost of keeping those plants online would be immense. By 2028, if Trump were to mandate the retention of all fossil fuel plants slated for retirement, the annual cost to ratepayers would be more than $3.1 billion, the analysis found.

The report also considers a number of aging plants that are not yet scheduled for retirement. It finds Trump’s actions could create a “perverse incentive,” causing plant owners to claim they’re planning to shut down, inducing the feds to step in and keep them open, with the cost borne by ratepayers.

Accounting for that possibility, the report found that ratepayer costs could reach $5.9 billion per year to keep the entire aging fossil fuel fleet online. California, Texas and Colorado would see the highest increases in electricity bills.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

A makeshift memorial for DFL State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman is seen at the Minnesota State Capitol building on June 16, 2025, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The violence has sparked concern among lawmakers across the country. (Photo by Steven Garcia/Getty Images)

A year into her first term in office, New Jersey Assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer decided not to run for reelection.

The political world saw her as a rising star in 2023; Jaffer, a Democrat, previously served as the nation’s first female Muslim mayor. But rampant harassment from online commenters and other politicians about her religion, as well as high-profile acts of violence against other public officials, made her reconsider her political future.

“I was concerned about my family,” Jaffer said in an interview. “They didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t want to put them in harm’s way.”

In the wake of the assassination of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the wounding of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, more public officials across the country are taking stock of their safety. Some say death threats have become part of the job. They fear that violence — real attacks and constant threats — will scare potential candidates away from seeking public office.

Michigan Democratic state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky said she has faced multiple death threats since 2020. In one instance, a neighbor reported that a stranger was waiting at her house, demanding to know when she would return home.

“I have certainly considered somewhat frequently that I might be killed doing this job,” Pohutsky told Stateline. “But what really alarmed me [about the Minnesota attacks] and stopped me in my tracks was I had not considered that someone might enter my home and kill my family.”

Nationwide, lawmakers in both parties say political rhetoric that dehumanizes anyone who disagrees on an issue has created a charged atmosphere. As politicians increasingly describe their rivals not just as wrong on policy but as the enemy, the message can embolden extremists to carry out violence.

“People treat death threats against government officials as a matter of course until someone is assassinated,” Pohutsky said. “It’s an impossible position, because the people who are carrying out these attacks want people to leave public office.”

In some states, lawmakers are discussing whether officials’ home addresses should be included in campaign finance forms and other publicly available documents. Elsewhere, political leaders are reviewing their security protocols.

But elected leaders say there are no easy answers. And they fear things will get worse before they get better.

“These threats of violence, we’ve seen it before here and there, but nothing like we’ve seen it now,” said South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, speaking with reporters this week. “And yes, I think that would make a lot of people stop and think and decide they do not want to enter that arena.

“It’s a tough arena anyway,” McMaster said, “but when you have the threat of violence — unanticipated, unmitigated, unexpected violence — that’s just one more reason not to get involved in politics.”

Growing threats

In recent years, elected officials have faced a growing number of threats and attacks.

In 2020, a group of men were accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; five were later convicted. That same year, the 20-year-old son of a federal judge in New Jersey was killed by a gunman and lawyer who had previously had a case before her.

Paul Pelosi, the husband of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was assaulted by a hammer-wielding attacker at his home in 2022. President Donald Trump was targeted in a pair of assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign, including a shooting in which a bullet grazed his ear. And earlier this year, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was targeted in an arson attack on the governor’s mansion.

Nearly 9 in 10 state lawmakers reported facing demeaning or derogatory comments or actions in their current term or the campaign leading up to it, and more than 4 in 10 reported harassment and threats, according to a report published last year by the progressive-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.

Women were three to four times more likely than men to experience abuse related to their gender, according to the report. And people of color were more than three times as likely as white officeholders to endure race-based abuse.

Since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, political threats against candidates — particularly women, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals — have escalated dramatically, according to Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something, a political action committee that helps recruit young, liberal candidates for office.

“It sucks that we have to have these conversations with folks,” she said. “But the goal of this violence is to stop good people from running.”

Litman said that her organization offers support for candidates, including safety protocols, digital privacy training and mental health support. But increasing political violence and the easy online access to officeholders and candidates has begun to change how they interact with constituents and what they share about their lives.

“We have candidates who may have not thought twice to share a photo of their family or post updates about their lives outside of political office,” Litman said. “But now there is a shift in being more deliberate about what is being shared, especially online, where people can send threats and other stuff into your DMs, and use that information to stoke even more fear.”

Language matters

Leaders say that rhetoric characterizing opponents as evil has made violent incidents more likely.

“People have gotten very, very good at toeing the line just shy of actually threatening to kill people,” Pohutsky, the Michigan lawmaker, said.

“That’s sort of become normalized,” she said. “If you make this a righteous fight, if you convince people that someone is harming children, it’s much easier to incite violence against them. That language is intentional.”

The changes have accelerated in recent years. Returning home in 2015 after serving in combat zones as a U.S. Marine and working in post-conflict regions, Jake Harriman said he didn’t recognize the country he had fought for.

Harriman said the tactics he witnessed extremist groups use in conflict areas abroad to exploit fractured nations and warring factions — such as division, fear, isolation — he now sees playing out across the United States.

“What shocked me most,” said Harriman, founder of More Perfect Union, a veteran-led civic service group, “was the hatred — Americans dehumanizing each other in ways I had only seen in war.”

More people are finding a sense of self and belonging via partisan political groups, such as identifying as MAGA or as an opponent of MAGA, said Amy Pason, an associate professor who specializes in political rhetoric at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“This is because people are more isolated or finding social groups on social media — or the other media they consume — and they identity with that group,” she said. “This gets to be more problematic when belonging to that group is to also accept beliefs and shift your attitudes — that those not in your group are dangerous or out to harm your group.”

Despite condemnations of the Minnesota shootings from state lawmakers of both parties, some Republicans in Congress rushed to social media to falsely blame Democrats and liberals.

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat and friend of Hortman’s, confronted U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, in person on Capitol Hill after he made inflammatory comments about the assassination on the platform X. The posts were removed soon after.

Oregon state Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat, said the Minnesota attacks were a wakeup call. He pledged to direct his public comments in the future “towards the substance of the proposal and not the character of the person proposing.”

“I do think it can be a thin line,” Golden said. “I probably have crossed it one time or another, and I’m gonna do everything I possibly can not to do it again.”

But politicians have incentive to keep their base motivated and engaged through inflammatory attacks on people they characterize as the enemy, which dehumanizes them and fuels political violence, said Donald Nieman, a history professor at Binghamton University in New York.

Nieman noted in an email to Stateline that fear for personal and family safety is increasingly common among elected officials — affecting even how they vote. While he believes the path out is clear — “tone down the rhetoric, emphasize common ground” — he’s not optimistic.

“In a polarized political system, politicians depend on (and fear) a loyal base,” Neiman wrote. “I fear that the discussion of political violence will take the same course as school shootings: We will lament them, propose solutions that go nowhere, and there will be more shootings.”

Security measures

Just hours before the Minnesota shootings, Oregon lawmakers passed a bill that would make it harder for the public to obtain the home addresses of elected officials. Rather than having that information on the secretary of state’s website, as is currently law, the bill would require residents to submit a public records request to obtain those details.

In 2023, New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill exempting local officials from sharing their addresses publicly, but Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy declined to sign the measure, citing a technicality with its effective date.

“We’re in such uncharted territory when all of this data can be accessed by anyone and made into lists,” said Jaffer, the former New Jersey lawmaker, citing the “hit list” of 45 officials that law enforcement officials say had been compiled by alleged Minnesota attacker Vance Boelter.

“There needs to be more done to protect those who step up to serve, but we also need to protect freedom of speech and freedom of information,” she said.

Jaffer said a friend from another country was surprised to learn that she had no security detail while in office.

“We’re just normal people,” she said of state legislators. “It’s a great thing that we’re accessible, but it certainly makes us vulnerable.”

Following the Minnesota shootings, North Dakota officials announced they will take down lawmakers’ addresses from legislative websites. New Hampshire legislative leaders also pulled down pages with information about elected leaders, while ramping up security at the State House. Meanwhile, lawmakers in New Mexico are reviewing their security practices.

Litman, of Run for Something, said legislatures should consider funding security for local candidates and officials who may not be able to afford it.

“I think there’s a real fear that if Donald Trump, who has the best security detail in the world, can be attacked at a public event, then what about local officials who don’t have the budget to afford to keep themselves or their families safe?” Litman said.

Julia Shumway of the Oregon Capital Chronicle and Seanna Adcox of the South Carolina Daily Gazette contributed to this report.

Stateline reporters Alex Brown and Robbie Sequeira can be reached at abrown@stateline.org and rsequeira@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.