PORTLAND, Ore. — An Oregon wildland firefighter arrested last month by U.S. Border Patrol while battling a Washington wildfire was released Tuesday from an immigration detention facility.

Rigoberto Hernandez Hernandez, 23, is back home in Oregon nearly four weeks after getting arrested by agents who were working with Bureau of Land Management officers on Aug. 27, according to his attorneys at Innovation Law Lab and Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

Hernandez was part of a 44-person crew fighting the Bear Gulch fire in the Olympic National Forest. Agents took him and another firefighter into custody during a multiagency criminal investigation into the two contractors for whom the men were employed. The arrests occurred in a remote, blockaded fire zone where the firefighters were as

See Full Page