Farmworker Union Leader Alfredo Juarez Zeferino to be Released from Detention on Condition of “Voluntary Departure”

Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.

Last week (07/14), supporters of farmworker union organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino gathered outside the Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Tacoma, WA to hold a vigil during his immigration court hearing. Amid chants of “Free them all,” family members, workers, and activists denounced what they described as politically-motivated detentions and deportations by ICE.

Rosalinda Guillen, a longtime farmworker rights advocate, read a statement from Zeferino aloud at the vigil. “My story of organizing started on July 12, 2013, in a blueberry field in Skagit County,” Zeferino wrote. “Throughout these many years of fighting for justice, we have won major victories for farmworkers—paid rest breaks and overtime, for example.”

He reaffirmed his ongoing commitment to labor rights: “Since 2017, I have been working under a union contract, and I’m very proud of this. I want everyone to know, no matter where I end up, I will continue fighting for justice alongside all of you.”

Zeferino, now 25, began working in Washington’s fields at the age of 13 and co-founded the independent farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia while still a teenager.

At Monday’s hearing, Zeferino accepted “voluntary departure,” a legal process that allows a non-citizen to leave the U.S. without receiving a formal removal order. His attorney, Larkin VanDerhoef, said the decision helps him avoid harsher penalties that could complicate any future legal return.

This development is part of a broader shift by the reactionary old-state toward intensified terror tactics, in this case to coerce people into “voluntary departures” and “self-deportations.” Such tactics are desirable to the government because they provoke less rebellious response from the broader masses and cost the state nothing.

Suspension of Democratic Rights

Conditions at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, operated by GEO Group, have faced years of scrutiny. Detainees have reported missed meals, poor water quality, medical neglect, and the use of solitary confinement. In his statement, Zeferino described going without food and enduring degrading conditions. Since 2023, the Washington Department of Health has logged over 100 complaints about the facility’s water quality and has sued for access to inspect the facility.

Zeferino’s case also involves the systemic denial of bond in Tacoma’s immigration court, which has drawn national attention for its unusually high denial rates. A lawsuit filed in March challenged what it described as an unusually harsh pattern of bond denials by immigration judges at the facility, arguing that such denials had become routine—making Tacoma one of the toughest courts in the nation for detained immigrants seeking release while their cases are pending.

Those concerns have been compounded by a new federal directive that could make bond denial standard nationwide. A memo from Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons instructed that immigrants detained by ICE, whether arrested at the border or in the interior, would no longer be eligible to request bond hearings while facing deportation. Instead, they must remain in custody “for the duration of their removal proceedings.” The memo stated that the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice had “revisited” their legal interpretation of release authority and concluded that individuals in ICE detention “may not be released from custody.”

Photo: Zeferino at a demonstration, Community to Community social media.

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