A well-known farm labor organizer in Washington’s Skagit Valley, Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, has decided to give up his deportation fight for now and return to Mexico.

Since March, Juarez has been detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, where a crowd of supporters gathered Monday morning for his hearing inside the facility’s immigration court. He said this latest decision in his case was tough.

“It’s hard to fight the case from here. Everyone loses. There’s no confidence in this court,” Juarez said.

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Still, he urged other people without legal status to continue to fight to stay in the U.S.

During Monday’s hearing, Judge Theresa Scala agreed to Juarez’s request for what’s called voluntary departure. This type of removal allows an individual to avoid a potential deportation order and leaves certain legal options for them to return to the U.S. later. It also requires people to pay for their own flight home and to depart by a specific deadline. In this case, Scala ruled for a departure date no later than Aug. 13.

Juarez’s attorney, Larkin VanDerhoef, said because Juarez is detained, VanDerhoef expects Immigration and Customs Enforcement could put his client on the next flight to Mexico after his paperwork is filed. That flight could be in the next few days or weeks.

After the hearing, Juarez was able to briefly meet with family and friends from his unionizing efforts over the years, exchanging goodbyes.

“I’ll see you soon,” he told them. “I’ll see you in Mexico.”

As some friends got emotional, Juarez lightened the mood, joking that he had to pay another detainee three packets of ramen for a haircut for the hearing.

“He is a fighter, and he wanted to fight. He wanted to be released to his community that he’s a part of and, in many ways, a leader of,” VanDerhoef said. “[But] the length of detention and the conditions that he’s in were becoming too much.”

“It’s tragic because it would have gone differently were he not detained, and I don’t think he should have been,” VanDerhoef added.

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Immigration agents arrested Juarez on March 25 on his way to work near the tulip fields of Skagit County. According to immigration records, he had a standing deportation order from 2018, although his family contends they were never notified.

The order stems from a 2015 traffic stop in Bellingham, when police pulled over Juarez for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. The police then called immigration enforcement. Juarez sued the City of Bellingham and the police for racist profiling. The city settled for $100,000.

His ongoing detention this year sparked protests by union and immigrant rights groups outside the Tacoma detention center, including a vigil on the day of his hearing where a crowd chanted “free them all.”

VanDerhoef said Juarez had considered applying for asylum, but “it would likely be months more if he were to apply. … The sad irony is we think he should have been released on bond months ago.”

In a bond hearing last month, Judge Scala said she would have approved the $5,000 bond to release Juarez from the Northwest ICE Processing Center, but she didn’t have the legal jurisdiction to do so.

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VanDerhoef said the tough standards in the Tacoma court for bond approvals, combined with the new Trump administration’s policy of mass deportations, exacerbates conditions at the detention center. He said poor conditions inside detention and steep odds to bond out of the facility make it difficult for detainees to stay in the U.S. to fight their cases.

After Juarez’s hearing, a vigil that started for him early in the morning had turned into a rally.

Alea Juarez Zeferino and her brother Alvaro Juarez Zeferino, who are both citizens, were there, as they have been over the past four months to attend their older brother’s hearings.

“My brother has done nothing wrong but help people,” said 15-year-old Alea, standing outside of the immigrant lockup.

“It hurts me seeing so many families being torn apart,” she added. “So many immigrants [have] no lawyers to represent them, and it all just hurts me, because I never expected this. We never did anything wrong. All we did was come here to feed the world, and that’s all we ever wanted to do, and that’s all we want to continue to do.”

Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez is a reporter with KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/15/washington-farm-labor-organizer-ends-his-deportation-fight-after-4-months-in-ice-detention/