We got hit, guys. It's all right. Tribal member. Yeah, we got pulled over by ice. Crazy dude. We got members from the tribe of Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla. [00:00:18] This crazy man. Look at that. Posted up. Last Wednesday, Ice launched an immigration raid on a group of firefighters, and two of them were were arrested. [00:00:34] You just saw some of what went down. And we'll give you all the details in a moment. But first, Jake, what is your initial reaction to Ice agents arresting firefighters? This is the largest fire in the state of Washington. [00:00:50] Are you mental? What are you doing? So Jordan's going to give you the details of the story. Then I'm going to give you three reasons why this is an epic disaster for the country. We cannot do this. So let's tell you the rest of the story, and then I'll tell you why. [00:01:05] It's it's going to start breaking down a lot of things that we take for granted in America. Yeah. Well, this raid took place, like Jake said, in the state of Washington, where firefighters have been going up against the Bear Gulch fire for nearly two months now. [00:01:23] Two months. Firefighters you saw in the cold open worked for two companies that have contracts with the US Forest Service. They were cutting firewood for residents when Ice showed up, the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a statement. [00:01:38] 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 remains remained uninterrupted the entire time. [00:01:55] No active firefighters were even questioned, and US Border Patrol's actions did not prevent or interfere with any personnel actively engaged in fight or fighting efforts. According to veteran wildland firefighters who spoke to The Washington Post, [00:02:11] it is rare for immigration raids to take place while firefighters are on the job, regardless of the capacity. The firefighters also noted that immigrants make up a large portion of the firefighting workforce, so now firefighters have to worry about immigration raids on top of the work that they are doing, which is extremely dangerous. [00:02:31] Dale Bosworth, a former chief of the US Forest Service, stated firefighting is a difficult, dangerous job and firefighters need to keep their focus on the fire. We don't need to have those kinds of distractions. It's dangerous. An anonymous former firefighter stated there are a lot of those crews [00:02:51] on contracts that do employ noncitizens. This could expand rapidly through the active contract crews throughout the West. After the raid, 44 of the firefighters were taken off premise. [00:03:08] Two were arrested on charges of entering the country illegally. One of the firefighters is represented by a nonprofit legal group called the Innovation Law Lab. In a letter to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the group's executive director, [00:03:24] Steven Manning, described the client as a resident of Keizer, Oregon, who came to the US nearly two decades ago when he was about four years old. Manning wrote that the man and his family were victims of a federal crime in Oregon, [00:03:41] and their cooperation with federal law enforcement at the time led to the US Attorney's Office in Oregon certifying their application for a type of visa reserved for crime victims who help law enforcement. The family has been waiting for the immigration system [00:03:58] to process that application since 2018. So to me, there's two things here. There's the cruelty, the The barbarism of raiding a firefighting work site, and then also another reminder that the system is inherently flawed. [00:04:16] It is a broken system, so these cries of just come in the right way, fall on deaf ears when you're even generally familiar with how bad our immigration system is. - What do you think? - Yeah. So the thing I'm most concerned about is the long term consequences of this. [00:04:31] So let me begin to break it down. Yes, you're absolutely right about the cruelty and and especially against the guy who actually worked with law enforcement. So it affects people on a personal level. And that's important, right. But the long term consequences apply to all of us. [00:04:47] So first of all, you're stopping them in the middle of fighting a fire in general. So it is the largest fire in the state of Washington. It's a it's taken a long, long time to battle that fire. And it's still not out. So yes, different crews do different things at different times. [00:05:03] But basically you pulled 44 guys off of an assignment on that job and then rested two. Okay, so interrupting a firefighting crew in the middle of fighting a fire could affect all of us. Certainly can affect the the state of Washington. Those those crews actually saved a whole bunch of cities, lake homes, [00:05:23] forests, and the list goes on and on. So that's disaster number one. Disaster number two is now you're going to have a lot less firefighters, not only apparently they were using some undocumented immigrants to fight fires, probably because undocumented immigrants need work and they're more desperate. [00:05:41] So they're willing to risk their lives to go fight fires. And remember, everybody has different jobs within a firefighting crew, especially one that gigantic. Right? So now those guys are goners. They're not going to show up. Right. But on top of that, people who are concerned, whether they're Latino, Native [00:05:58] American, etc., what if they round me up and I'm innocent, like one of the guys that they rounded up in this case? Well, forget it, I'm not going. Well, you might not know this, but a lot of on the West Coast, a lot of the firefighting crews are are Latino. So what if half of them go home now? What are we going to do? [00:06:15] And what if a giant fire breaks out in LA and people go, I'm not going to go to help to fight the fire? The idiot ice might come and round us up. Oh, we found a great time right in the middle of a fire. So that's disaster number two. Disaster number three. [00:06:30] The firefighters were super pissed at, basically law enforcement in this case that showed up. So now you got cops versus firefighters, or in this case, ice versus firefighters. What if they're in the middle of fighting the fire and the cops are like, oh, stop fighting the fire and come here? [00:06:45] And then they have a disagreement. And now we got a giant mess on our hands. Because why the federal law enforcement ice in this case is like, I'm not going to work with anyone else. I don't care about the firefighters. I don't care about fires that might burn down your home or your local community. Stephen Miller told me to meet a quota and I'm here to meet the quota. [00:07:03] By hell or high water. Well, this is hell. And soon they'll be hitting high water. And so they don't care about us. They care about meeting Meaning that stupid quota of Stephen Miller, so that Donald Trump can brag that he deported more people than Barack Obama. Disaster number four. [00:07:19] So that guy that they rounded up, he was four years old when they came to the country. He's been here for a couple of decades. But most importantly, he and his family worked with law enforcement to stop crime. So they got he got an exemption to become a US citizen because he was so helpful. [00:07:37] I'm funny enough to law enforcement and here comes law enforcement going at least some portion of it. The federal ice level going, oh, you worked with us. I don't care. I'm going to violate the rules, the agreement, the law, and I'm going [00:07:53] to round you up and deport you anyway. Now think about it, guys. Who's going to want to work with law enforcement? In fact, your name will then be on the record and you're on the record as an undocumented person. That's it. Stephen Miller is going to say, boom, easy way to hit the quota. [00:08:09] So now people are going to be reluctant to fight fires. We've got interdepartmental, battles for no reason, especially in the middle of natural disasters. And, people are going to be afraid to work with law enforcement at all. So how does this help the average American? [00:08:28] And by the way, when you ask the average American, what do you think they say close the border. They say deport criminals who are here that are undocumented. Okay, so Trump did that. They gave him credit for it. Then they asked him, do you want ice rounding up people [00:08:43] in the middle of the country like they're doing now that are just undocumented but have not committed crimes? And the American people resoundingly say, no, we don't want that. But it doesn't matter, because Stephen Miller has to hit a quota, and Donald Trump has to brag about how he deported more people than Obama. [00:08:59] So they're going to do all of this massive long term damage, let alone the personal short term damage for, at best, politics. And it's dumb politics. It doesn't even help them. Yeah, I think that it's important to point out that this is increasingly growing [00:09:17] more and more popular, or more and more unpopular. Sorry. The more people hear stories like this, see federal agents in their cities, in their neighborhoods, hear these horror stories, and more importantly, the noise that you all watching this make [00:09:36] the outreach you do in your communities. If federal agents are not in your city, you don't have that immediate proximity, that threat sharing, telling your friends, your coworkers, your family about what's happening elsewhere if they're just not paying attention to the news because they don't like Trump or that's not who they are, [00:09:55] it is increasingly growing more and more unpopular. There is a there is an avenue. It's not the only way to stop this, but that is potentially one way to inhibit these long term plans. They're saying they have these massive quotas. [00:10:11] They're seeking approval from the Supreme Court. But if their base starts to turn on them. They won't pursue it to such a great extent, if at all. So there is a lot of power in your hands and helping to prevent this, because you see these types of circumstances, like the story we talked about in [00:10:28] the last block or now these firefighters, the way it affects human beings who are just trying to go about their day, who are just trying to live their lives like Jake is saying, it's not just the people they detain. They're going to scare many people off from even showing up to work. [00:10:45] And in a situation like this where they have been fighting this wildfire for two months, there are ripple effects. And I want to point one other thing out. Ice has been in Los Angeles now for a few months. A couple months ago, they came to my neighborhood in just a few streets away, [00:11:04] harassed somebody who was out in his front yard, a citizen. My friend and I went over there, we were talking to and we asked, why do you think they stopped to talk to you? And he said, Because I'm Latino and I have tattoos. That's it. [00:11:20] Thankfully, he had proof of citizenship in his house. But if you're fighting a wildfire or you're on a job site chopping wood, you're not going to be carrying that on you. If you're in a if you're fighting a wildfire, you would risk destroying it. [00:11:36] Why would you do that? But if that's the only thing that can prevent them from taking you as they're racially profiling you, why would anybody show up to work? And again, there are ripple effects here that we need to consider. But this administration is too barbaric and too reckless that that's not a factor [00:11:55] in their consideration. Yeah. My last two points is I mean, think about how ridiculous this is, that if you're a Latino with tattoos. Now, that is the number one thing it seems like Ice is looking for. American citizens are allowed to get tattoos, [00:12:12] and they're allowed to be Latinos. What is this? What kind of grotesque state is this? So it's one thing to pick up undocumented people who are criminals and kick them the hell out of the country. It's another thing to say, oh, what kind of tattoo do you have? [00:12:27] What race are you? Okay, okay, let's target them. That's disgusting. Now look, guys. But the last thing is, in order to win so that we end these horrors, you could go after the leaders as we do, call out Stephen Miller, [00:12:44] call out Donald Trump, etc., but do not attack Trump voters, who the polling indicates are beginning to come to our side on this. The independents are massively on our side on this, so keep an open mind when you're talking to fellow citizens. Don't yell at them. Persuade them. [00:13:02] Talk about the things we talked about here, which is why would you want to stop firefighters in the middle of fighting a fire? Who's going to sign up for this? Who's going to work with law enforcement now and get them to understand this doesn't help our community. It hurts our community. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. [00:13:18] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.