Real-life ‘Twilight’ town battling immigration problems
RIP Sr. Salinas. It’s not just Arizona. It’s not even just southern border states.
Benjamin Roldan Salinas, a forest worker in the country illegally, leapt into the frigid Sol Duc River to escape a pursuing U. S. Border Patrol Agent, disappearing into the fast-moving waters.
For more than three weeks, his family, friends and volunteers — including other illegal immigrants — scoured the dense forest along the swollen river’s banks for any sign of him.
The Border Patrol suspected that Salinas had survived and fled. Still, as many as 150 people at a time continued to look.
“They believed he was out there somewhere because he hadn’t gone home,” Clallam County Sheriff’s Sergeant Brian King said.
The search ended June 4, when a family friend spotted the 43-year-old Salinas’ bloated, decomposing body entangled in roots downstream, according to the sheriff’s report.
His death heightened tensions in what has become a protracted engagement between the Border Patrol and the immigrant population of Forks — the small, remote Washington town best known as the fictional home of the vampire series “Twilight.”
“We talk about Arizona, Texas and the southern border … it’s here. It’s in our backyard,” said Forks Mayor Bryon Monohon, about immigration enforcement efforts in his town. “It really is just an atmosphere of fear.”
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