Nowhere-Near-the-Border Patrol in Forks

One day earlier this May, Benjamin Roldan Salinas and Crisanta Ramos decided to explore a new area of the Olympic National Forest. The Hispanic couple was looking for salal, a green, oval-leafed plant that is prized by florists around the world for its ability to stay fresh for weeks. It grows like a weed on the mountainsides around Forks, a tiny town on the Olympic Peninsula that once proclaimed itself "the logging capital of the world" and has since become better known as the setting for the popular vampire romance series Twilight.

Joshua Huston

Nina Shapiro

Crisanta, holding a picture of her boyfriend who drowned.

Details

Video: Salal Picking, the Enterprise That Made Forks a Magnet for Hispanics--and the Border Patrol

Related Content

• Border Patrol Finally Addresses Forks City Council
  August 9, 2011
• Border Patrol Interpreter Service Translates To Arrests and Deportations
  November 9, 2011
• Hey Twilight Fans! Sink Your Fangs Into Bella's Ravioli
  November 16, 2011
• This Week's Cover Story: Beyond Borders
  July 27, 2011
• Why Is the Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part I Soundtrack So Terrible?
  November 23, 2011

More About

• Crisanta Ramos
• Benjamin Roldan Salinas
• Manuela Velasquez
• Immigration
• Government and Politics

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

As they were loading their van, Salinas and Ramos spotted a Forest Service officer driving by. Speaking through an interpreter, Ramos today says the couple knew instantly that they were in trouble—by the terms of the permit they had purchased, they were supposed to pick elsewhere. They had only planned to buy a different permit if the new area proved rich in the valuable plant.

Ramos says the officer didn't stop them then. But he was waiting on nearby Highway 101.

The ensuing deadly encounter involved the Border Patrol, a federal agency that would seem to have no business in Washington anywhere but near Canada, and was covered by newspapers and Spanish-language TV stations from here to Mexico. Yet those reports have left out a crucial fact—one that elucidates a larger story about the Border Patrol's role, and tactics, in places across the country that have never before considered themselves part of the border.

According to Ramos, the Forest Service officer who stopped her and Salinas was already on the phone when they first spied him parked on the side of the road. Minutes later, a Border Patrol agent arrived.

In other words, according to Ramos, the officer seems to have summoned the Border Patrol before talking to the couple. That's important, because the Border Patrol, whose agents are required to speak Spanish, would later say that it had only been called in to interpret.

Not only couldn't the officer have known at that stage that he would need such a service, but when he finished the phone call and pulled over the couple, Ramos says, he communicated just fine on his own.

"Permiso?" the officer asked.

When Salinas indicated they didn't have a permit, the officer, speaking English but using gestures to make himself understood, asked for an ID. Salinas handed over his driver's license and Mexican identity card.

Ramos and Salinas waited for the inevitable ticket. Then Ramos saw the Border Patrol car. "La migra is here," she said.

Salinas opened the door and ran down an incline that led from the highway to the raging Sol Duc River. Ramos followed, but stumbled. After catching up, the Forest Service officer grabbed her by the hair, got her against the ground, and handcuffed her, according to Ramos. By the time she looked up, Salinas was gone.

For three weeks, an ad hoc search party of local Hispanics—on some days 150 strong—went through the woods, calling his name, although they feared he had drowned. The Border Patrol issued a statement saying that Salinas, who couldn't swim, had jumped into the river. On June 5, a friend who had joined the search party spotted Salinas' body caught on a log at the river's edge. He was 42 years old and left behind three grown children locally and two more in Mexico.

Salinas' death traumatized the Hispanic population of Forks—about a third of the town's 3,500 residents—and cast light on the Border Patrol's aggressive presence in town. Agents have stopped and questioned Hispanics paying their water bill at City Hall, filling up at the gas station, leaving the grocery store, and riding their bikes. High-school students as well as adults have been asked for their papers, according to the Forks Human Rights Group, which has compiled nearly 80 stories of such encounters.

Agents also hover in the woods for hours, sometimes deep into the night, says Mayor Bryon Monohon. "It's creepy," he says. "People just disappear and we have no way of tracking them." (The nearest immigration detention center in Tacoma, roughly 160 miles away, does not readily provide information about detainees.)

Just as troubling to the mayor is what the Border Patrol is doing in Forks in the first place. The town is nearly 60 miles from the nearest port of entry from Canada, in Port Angeles, which is served by a small ferry that travels between the Olympic Peninsula and the picturesque city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. The nearest land border crossing, much more heavily trafficked, is 200 miles away, in Blaine.

The Border Patrol, however, claims jurisdiction over all territory 100 miles from an actual border. Federal law has long granted the agency the authority to work this far inland. But it is only since 9/11, as the federal government has granted the agency more money and manpower, that its resources have matched its ambitions. The change has been especially noticeable on the northern border, where the number of agents has increased exponentially.

In 2000, there were a little more than 300 agents patrolling up north. By last year that number had ballooned to 2,263, an increase of more than 700 percent.