By Luisa Loi
La Conner Community News

Skagit County is experiencing a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, with local immigration advocates and unverified social media posts reporting sightings of unmarked vehicles and arrests taking place on a daily basis over the past month.

ICE did not return a request to confirm the claims and provide comment by press time.

Multiple sources said immigrants, mostly Latino farmworkers, are being taken to an unmarked ICE complex in Ferndale before being transferred to the Tacoma Northwest ICE Processing Center — a for-profit facility that has raised concerns over reports of abuse, unsanitary conditions and medical neglect — and deported without due process.

This month’s arrests are a stark contrast to what La Conner farmworker activist Rosalinda Guillen described as a relatively “quiet” spring. Just as the immigrant community was starting to “relax” after a stressful 2025, she said, ICE intensified its presence locally.

This seems to be part of the feds’ nationwide — but far less publicized — effort to take more people into custody. In late June, ICE agents arrested 10,000 people in five days alone to reach a quota of 2,000 arrests per day, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

In an email, Administrative Lieutenant Jeff Willard from the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office wrote that the office has not been made aware of this increase and that there has been no communication with the federal agency. 

Community to Community Development (C2C), the farmworker grassroots organization Guillen founded in 2004, is aware of at least 15 arrests that have taken place in Skagit since mid-June, but she believes many other incidents have fallen under the radar due to the lack of witnesses and reports to the organization. 

“It’s hard to quantify, because it’s so constant,” said Liz Darrow, C2C’s participatory democracy coordinator. “We’ve heard we can expect it to increase even more.”

Burlington and Mount Vernon most affected

In an email, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) wrote that, between January and June 2026, the network observed a 44.8% increase in calls from around the state, with more than half occurring in May and June alone. 

This data does not account for the detentions people did not feel safe enough to report, a WAISN spokesperson wrote. In Skagit County, WAISN averaged one or two detention reports per month between 2025 and 2026. That jumped to four in the first two weeks of July alone.

In Skagit County specifically, the arrests are being carried out predominantly in Mount Vernon and Burlington, and in some cases along I-5, with immigrants detained during traffic stops as they commute to work in the early mornings, or outside grocery stores, or as they go about their lives. Numerous arrests have taken place outside the Grocery Outlet in Mount Vernon, Guillen said.

One of the leaders of a local immigrant support network who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing other volunteers, said their group directly witnessed three arrests this past weekend alone, and that the residents of one neighborhood in Mount Vernon reported it “has had at least nine people abducted over the past four weeks.” 

“Prior to June, we were losing multiple community members to ICE every week. Beginning in June, it has ramped up to multiple community members being abducted every day,” they wrote in a text.

Advocates say the price is also being paid by the family members who not only lose a loved one, but a breadwinner. Meanwhile, businesses lose customers and workers.

Darrow, who has also been monitoring the situation in Whatcom County, has observed a shift from large and sporadic workplace raids to regularly occurring arrests of two workers at a time, which is less likely to make headlines but adds up nevertheless. In Lynden, a business lost 45 workers in the last two months, she wrote in a text Tuesday.

Guillen, a Mexican-American who grew up farming in Skagit Valley, pointed out the surge has coincided with the current harvest season — leaving farmworkers who cannot afford to stay at home particularly vulnerable.

“It’s the worst time to be spreading this kind of fear around, when people are so busy,” she said.

‘The agents will smash the window’

The anonymous support network leader described federal agents wearing ICE vests and, in some cases, face coverings, despite a new state law  banning the practice in March. 

Tuesday, the Seattle Times reported that the Trump Administration ordered ICE to cease most traffic stops after two people were shot and killed in Texas and Maine on July 7 and 13.

Before the news broke, Guillen expressed concern over the possibility that agents may feel empowered to use violent tactics in rural and less visible areas. Tuesday, she questioned how the new order will be enforced and how violators would be held accountable.

Wednesday, President Donald Trump said ICE should continue the traffic stops, contradicting the order.

The anonymous volunteer, who is among a group of people who take photo and video evidence of the arrests in a manner they said does not interfere with ICE’s operations, said the typical arrest involves three to five unmarked cars “swarming” the target’s vehicle, prompting the driver to pull over or blocking them from leaving a parking lot.

“If the person knows their rights and doesn’t roll down their window because (the agents) don’t have a warrant, the agents will smash the window. That is routinely happening now,” they said. “In two instances that we have documented… they didn’t even know the name of the person that they were abducting.”

Darrow and WAISN also reported agents have not been showing a warrant upon approaching people.

Once the person is in custody, their vehicle may be left on the side of the road. If any observers are present, they will try to contact the family of any occupants who were taken to let them know what happened, offer assistance and allow them to retrieve the car.

Typically, if a car is found unlocked with the keys inside, that is a sign it was left behind after an ICE arrest, the source said.

Twice in the last month, ICE took the vehicle to an unknown location, they said.

Some occupants may be left behind, too. The source said that a couple of weeks ago, a father was arrested near the Country Store in Mount Vernon while his two children were left in the car, as the children (a preschooler and a teenager) reportedly told volunteers in an interview. The La Conner Community News could not independently verify this claim.

Overcrowding

The numbers are much higher in neighboring Whatcom County, where C2C estimates there have been roughly over 100 arrests in the past two months.

A number of immigrants have also been followed and taken outside the courts in both Skagit and Whatcom — despite the Courts Open to All Act prohibiting federal authorities from arresting people at or near courthouses in Washington, Darrow pointed out.

Darrow said anyone who is detained by ICE in Skagit, Whatcom and Island counties is first processed in a little-known ICE facility in Ferndale that the agency does not list on its website. Families are often left guessing or completely unaware of where their loved ones have been taken until they are moved to Tacoma, as any contact with the people detained inside is nearly impossible, Darrow said.

“If they’re not showing up in the system yet, that means usually they are still in Ferndale,” she said.

Activists, including Darrow, first became aware of the facility in 2018 after someone reported they had been held in an unknown office in Ferndale. Immigration rights groups dug through public records to identify the location, and the Cascadia Daily News reported that the complex is located on the Pacific Industrial Park in 2022.

Darrow toured one of the two buildings in 2021, back when she served on Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board, and recalled seeing three 6-by-8-foot cells with a bench and a toilet in each.

At the time, she said, ICE staff told her no one was kept there overnight due to the lack of a kitchen. 

Former detainees, however, have painted a different picture, describing unsanitary conditions, lack of proper food, and being detained with as many as 15 people and for up to two weeks (far exceeding the 72-hour limit), all while their families scrambled to figure out what happened to them.

In some cases, depending on who is working in the facility that day, some family members may be allowed to bring medication if they suspect their relative is held there.

‘Wrecking people’s lives’

Advocates claim those who have been taken away are long-time community members who often have no criminal history and deserve due process regardless.

“Any community member who is abducted or disappeared, that is an immoral act,” Darrow said. “Our concern is the long term impact on families and communities here… This is a system that is permanently wrecking people’s lives.”

Luisa Loi is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.