José Bertín Cruz-Estrada was responding to a wildfire in Washington state on 27 August when four unmarked vehicles drove up to his crew’s remote location in a national forest.

Cruz-Estrada, part of a team of 20 Oregon-based firefighters, had spent a week hiking through dense terrain, battling smoke and clearing fallen trees and other debris to prevent the Bear Gulch fire, a 9,000-acre blaze, from growing. That morning, they were waiting for a taskforce leader to provide instructions, but Cruz-Estrada quickly realized the men arriving in trucks were not emergency responders.

They were US border patrol agents.

The armed officers surrounded the firefighters, directing them to line up while agents checked IDs. Officers “cleared” the crewmembers one-by-one until they got to Cruz-Estrada, 35, who they said was under arrest. The agents handcuffed him and another firefighter and drove the two away from the forest, where the fire was only 13% contained.

“I felt betrayed. We were fighting fires deep in the forest. I never thought this could happen,” recalled Cruz-Estrada, a longtime Oregon resident, who was born in Mexico and is undocumented.