SEATTLE — The U.S. Border Patrol is operating a roadblock — stopping cars and checking drivers’ nationalities — on a highway near the small Olympic Peninsula town of Forks, nabbing illegal immigrants and rattling the community.
Three roadblocks in all have been set up on the Olympic Peninsula, a region of northwest Washington dominated by Olympic National Park, and home to small towns and several American Indian reservations.
“Folks don’t really understand … why not in Blaine or on the Canadian border?” Forks Mayor Nedra Reed said. “Why here? Why Forks?”
Forks is not on the border. It’s 56 miles southwest of Port Angeles, where there is a ferry terminal that connects to British Columbia’s Vancouver Island.
Reed said that the first roadblock, set up in 2007, also created a stir in the community.
“The most recent roadblock created a level of anxiety that’s really unprecedented,” Reed said. “One 15-year-old boy and one 18-year-old were caught up in the issue.”
The roadblocks have produced 16 arrests as of Monday, and 14 of those were immigration-related, while two were for outstanding warrants, according officer Michael Bermudez, spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Blaine sector.
In Forks, the arrests set off a small protest in this town of 3,200 people, after it was learned the minor and the 18-year-old — a well-regarded recent high school graduate — had been arrested and now face deportation.
But for the Border Patrol, the roadblocks are part of expanded operations to secure a part of the state with a porous border.
The waterways and sparsely populated coastlines of the peninsula have been used for decades by smugglers trafficking in everything from Prohibition-era booze to potent British Columbia marijuana.
Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was convicted on multiple counts for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport around Jan. 1, 2000. Customs agents in Port Angeles caught him with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999.
“The Border Patrol’s primary concern is to enforce imm igration law, and I know in the past, we haven’t had checkpoints in the areas,” Bermudez said.
The agency has beefed up its presence on the nation’s northern border since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, adding more than 1,100 agents — or four times its presence before the attacks.
“We want to be able to control what’s going on in our borders,” Bermudez said.
Two of the three roadblocks are on U.S. 101, one outside of Forks and the second near Discovery Bay in Jefferson County; the third is at the Hood Canal bridge, Bermudez said.
Reed said people in Forks are divided on the immigration issue, with some supporting the federal agency’s actions, others not.
But in a community where timber and farm labor involves many Latin American immigrants, the Border Patrol’s crackdown has touched a nerve.
“I don’t think it’s fair to pick up the Hispanic people and deport them, I just think it’s wrong,” said Tanya Ward, a member of the Hoh tribe, who organized a protest two weeks ago and plans a second later this month. “It’s not the land of the free. Nobody wants to go anywhere anymore, they don’t want to deal with Border Patrol.”
Ward, 33, said the prejudice Latin American immigrants face from some was apparent when she led a few dozen people in her protest late last month.
“We had a few people yell at us to go back to where we came from,” she recalled. “I’m Native American; I hear that comment all the time.”
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