Border Patrol Arrests Contract Firefighters at the Bear Gulch Fire After the Bureau of Land Management Asks for an Identity Check

On Wednesday, Border Patrol agents arrested members of a 44-person contract crew working the Bear Gulch Fire in Olympic National Forest. The Border Patrol said the Bureau of Land Management asked it to check workers’ identities at a remote work site, and that the arrests came inside a multiagency criminal investigation of the contractors. BLM terminated both contracts and escorted the remaining 42 workers off federal land.

This is a different shape from the 2026 campground cases: the land-management agency requested the check on a contractor workforce, and the arrest followed from a contract investigation rather than from a ranger contact with recreation visitors. The CBS/AP account attributes the request to BLM; this entry does not attribute it to the Forest Service.