4/11/2023 0 Comments Manpower spokane![]() The passengers in line for a bus to Montana this October didn’t appear concerned about the agents waiting to interview them before they boarded. ![]() citizens, the armed federal agents can seem courteous or charming. For riders who can answer “yes” when asked if they are U.S. “Right now, it seems like we’re going after everybody.”ĭespite the ongoing controversy, including several lawsuits accusing agents of racially profiling and harassing Greyhound riders, the Border Patrol continues its bus raids, relying on complicity from bus company personnel and passengers. “What are we going to do? Are we going to use our discretion to target big offenders, or just go after everybody?” the attorney said. They said that whatever orders come down from the federal government, agents on the ground, like those at the bus depot, should use their judgment. ![]() One local immigration attorney, who didn’t want their name printed so as not to affect their working relationship with CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that about a third of their client base comes from the bus depot. The surge in arrests points to the indiscriminate nature of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. An unknown number of people have been pulled off buses and interrogated in the effort. None were “alien” smugglers or drug traffickers, as the Spokane Sector’s press office admitted in an interview. Since the city’s attempt to rein it in, the Border Patrol has only increased enforcement actions on buses: Agents have arrested 71 people at the Spokane bus depot this year, more than twice as many as they averaged in prior years. That puts it within the 100-mile interior enforcement zone where Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, claims heightened powers over residents and travelers alike. But the Border Patrol successfully argued that city officials couldn’t kick the agents out because Spokane is 97 miles - as the crow flies - from an international border. In response to public outcry, last year the Spokane City Council passed an ordinance restricting the Border Patrol’s access to the bus depot. None of the buses that stop there are arriving from Canada. The bus station is owned by the city of Spokane, which rents the land out to Greyhound and some regional bus companies. “They’re friends with the employees, they’re in the waiting rooms, they’re in the employee rooms, they have access to all the employee areas. The Border Patrol agents “have been present at the station for a long time,” Mesa said. Mesa and other volunteers have come to the bus depot to warn riders about the immigration raids, only to be pushed out - sometimes physically - by hostile bus depot employees. She pointed out that Washington is an agriculture state that brings in tens of thousands of seasonal workers each year, many of them from Mexico, for apple-picking and other jobs. They’re on their way to meet evening buses from the Spokane Intermodal Center, as the bus depot is called.īorder Patrol agents are drawn to the bus station “because they’re harassing people of color and low-income,” people, said Jennyfer Mesa, who founded a networking group called Latinos en Spokane. and Canada - cruise through downtown Spokane a little after 4 p.m. Nonetheless, three or four days a week, Border Patrol agents from the Spokane sector - a unit tasked with guarding 300 miles of “rugged and often remote” frontier between the U.S. Ask about life along the border, and people may assume you are referring to the border with Idaho. Next door to an Air Force base and home to Gonzaga University, Spokane is predominately white and politically conservative compared to stereotypes of the Pacific Northwest. The Spokane bus station would hardly seem to be a hotbed of such activity. She was referring to the sudden increase in Border Patrol agents boarding buses and pulling passengers off for questioning in Spokane - a friendly, midsize city on the eastern edge of Washington state, and nobody’s idea of a border town.Īmid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown, the Border Patrol has stepped up raids on Greyhound buses nationwide, combatting what the agency claims is a “growing threat” of “alien smuggling and drug trafficking organizations to move people, narcotics, and contraband to interior destinations.” “The whole wall thing, I think that’s what really beefed it up,” the Greyhound bus driver told me at the end of her shift.
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