Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, a farmworker activist and union organizer, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 25 in Sedro-Woolley. He is currently being held in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.
Zeferino, known as “Lelo,” was detained on his way to work, according to Community 2 Community Development (C2C), a food justice organization with which Zeferino worked closely. He was detained along with a group of other farmworkers.
Protests emerged quickly at the ICE facilities in Ferndale on March 25 and then Tacoma on March 27. Crowds gathered outside the Tacoma ICE facility to demand the release of both Zeferino and Lewelyn Dixon, a University of Washington lab technician who was detained despite holding a green card. Another protest was held at the Mt. Vernon courthouse on March 29.
The 25-year-old, originally from Mexico, immigrated to the U.S. with his family as a child and later became a prominent farmworker and immigrant rights advocate in northwest Washington.
Zeferino championed heat protections for Washington farmworkers, was a founding member of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, served on the now dissolved Bellingham Immigration Advisory Board, and was awarded the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center’s Youth Peacemaker Award in 2023.
Zeferino’s family sued the city of Bellingham, alleging racial bias after the Bellingham Police Department arrested Zeferino when he was 15 and turned him over to ICE. The racial bias suit was settled in federal court for $100,000 in 2021.
Liz Darrow, participatory democracy program coordinator at C2C, said the organization believes Zeferino was targeted by ICE because of his work as a labor organizer and activist.
David Yost, a spokesperson for ICE, said the agency was acting on a judicial order issued in 2018 to deport Zeferino to Mexico.
“Alfredo Juarez-Ceferino [sic], 25, is a citizen of Mexico ordered removed to his home country by an immigration judge March 27, 2018. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a joint federal law enforcement arrest of Juarez in Sedro Woolley, Washington, March 25, where he refused to comply with lawful commands to exit the vehicle he was occupying at the time of the arrest. Juarez will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings,” Yost wrote in an emailed statement to The Northern Light.
Darrow said Zeferino would have known if there were issues with his immigration status for seven years while he lived and worked in the area, appearing publicly and working with local farmworker unions frequently.
“He’s been in this community the whole time. He’s been doing the same work here the whole time,” Darrow said. “There’s really no reason for him to not know if he had any outstanding issues.”
Darrow said ICE was monitoring Zeferino at his home leading up to his detainment.
C2C is working closely with U.S. Senator Patty Murray and Congressman Rick Larsen to pressure the Trump administration to tamp down on immigration enforcement in Washington and across the country, Darrow said.
“In arrests across the country, the Trump Administration and ICE have claimed that they are going after ‘the worst of the worst’ – but there is no indication that Alfredo Juarez Zeferino and the other people detained today represent the worst of the worst,” Larsen wrote in a March 25 statement. “Immigrating to the United States is legal. Union organizing is legal.”
A legal defense fund has been set up for Zeferino with a goal of $50,000. Darrow said the fund is about halfway to the goal, but said his case is one of countless that deserve to be fought in court.
“Once we’ve done everything we can do for Lelo, there are of course other workers,” Darrow said. “We do encourage people to continue to help if they have capacity because we know that every single day there are more people who are being detained. Beyond a legal defense fund, there’s other funding that’s going to be needed to keep families together if they’re losing their main wage earner in their household.”
Donations to Zeferino’s legal defense fund can be made at foodjustice.org/donate-1. A court date has not been set for Zeferino, according to C2C.
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