President Donald Trump and his administration are “gaslighting the country” with recent immigration enforcement efforts targeting students and tax-paying employees, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen said, rather than violent criminals illegally in the country.
U.S. citizens should recognize the red flags for how the Trump administration is trampling the rights of immigrants because “we could possibly be next,” the congressman told Cascadia Daily News during an exclusive phone interview last week.
“They’re not interested in finding the worst of the worst,” Larsen said of the directives the White House has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “Instead, [they’re] focusing on people who are working, paying taxes, going to church and raising their families.”
Last week, 37 workers at Mt. Baker Roofing Company were arrested as part of a targeted ICE raid. The federal search warrant executed by ICE was part of an investigation into the Whatcom County business hiring immigrants without legal work authorization, according to an ICE spokesperson.
Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a prominent farmworker and immigrant advocate, was detained March 25 in Sedro-Woolley. An ICE statement to CDN said Juarez Zeferino is a Mexican citizen with a deportation order from 2018.
Rumeysa Ozturk, working on her PhD at Tufts University in Boston, was also arrested by ICE officers on March 25. Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until December 2024, was arrested by federal officers on March 8.
“We should all be concerned that he [Trump] will start to target citizens who disagree with him politically,” Larsen said.
Over the weekend, the president told reporters that he supported the idea of deporting U.S. citizens in the federal prison population to El Salvador, clarifying that he wasn’t sure about the legalities around such actions.
It’s an idea Trump has discussed publicly and privately numerous times, confirmed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, April 8.
She said the president’s idea to potentially deport U.S. citizens is focused on “heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly.” She said the administration was still not sure if there is a legal pathway to do so.
U.S. citizens cannot be deported from the country for any reason, explained Gabriel Chin, a UC Davis professor of law, in a piece for The Conversation. However, he did note there have been instances where they are deported by mistake.
The Constitution, however, provides broad protections for both citizens and noncitizens in the U.S.
“If you’re in the United States … you have a right to due process, you have a right to speak to an attorney, you have a right to a defense, and the administration is trampling those rights,” Larsen said.
“I just would caution folks not to take anything for granted under this administration,” he added.
Larsen said he’s working to address the Trump administration’s threats to immigrant workers and citizens on a number of fronts, including co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children (American Dream and Promise Act of 2025).
“I have also voted against legislation that would vastly expand the immigration detention system,” Larsen said in reference to the Laken Riley Act.
In an effort to protect the constitutional right to due process for citizens and noncitizens in the U.S., Larsen said he’s joined 47 other House members demanding the Department of Homeland Security “halt the immoral mistreatment of detained individuals and restore essential oversight offices.”
“I am also joining with colleagues to support Washington state’s case before federal courts in defense of birthright citizenship, which is a constitutional right,” Larsen said.
Larsen, whose office has gotten three times as many calls and emails since Trump’s inauguration compared to the same timeframe last year, encouraged community members to keep showing up to protests and to continue to advocate for the rights of those who have been detained.
“Keep shining a light on how these arrests are hurting our communities and our local economies,” he said.
Thousands showed up to “Hands Off!” protests in Whatcom and Skagit counties on Saturday, April 5. The congressman spoke at a similar event in Snohomish County that day.
Larsen encouraged everyone to learn about and share “Know your rights” information, pointing out that if approached by an ICE agent or police officer, “you do not have to reveal your immigration status and you have the right to remain silent.”
Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.
