YAKIMA — The voice of farmworker activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juárez Zeferino is missing in Washington these days.

For years, he was an advocate for farmworker rights, speaking on behalf of workers in English, Spanish and Mixtec, an Indigenous language used in southern Mexico. Now, he continues his fight from Guerrero, Mexico.

On July 14, Juárez Zeferino requested voluntary departure from the United States after being detained for nearly four months at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.

“The injustices that were happening to all the other detainees, that was part of the reason I made the decision to request voluntary departure,” Juárez Zeferino said in an interview from Mexico.

He was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents March 25 in Skagit County while taking h

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