All of these workers are here legally. And some of them tell us they have worked here for years. But they tell us the way they have been treated this year is worse than ever. And now one of them is dead.
These farm workers relaxing in this makeshift campsite should be working the large berry fields of Sarbanand Farms, a stone's throw from Canada. They are among 600 workers from Mexico who are here on H-2A visas.
But they say this summer's heat and the smoke from the BC fires made working conditions unbearable. When a worker died, they demanded answers, they said, and they were fired.
"So yeah we were fired because we were asking questions about our friend," Pablo Vicente Garcia said, through an interpreter. "And also because of asking for our work permits because they were expired."
Edgar Franks, whose Bellingham organization assists farm workers, said they complained that their colleague's pleas to see a doctor fell on deaf ears -- until he was too sick to survive.
"And then they started saying 'well, what happens if we get sick?' " said Franks.
The workers who had been here before said this year has felt different.
"Has something changed?" Franks was asked.
"Just something happened that that the attitude of the supervisors and then the company shifted," Franks said he was told, "where they just wanted to get the most out of the workers here."
In a statement, the company said the worker "received the best medical care and attention possible as soon as his distress came to our attention." And, the company insists, the working conditions when he got sick were "within normal ranges."
Doctors at Harborview said the 28-year-old worker died of natural causes. So no autopsy was performed.
As for some of the workers who remain, they say they still want to work. They plan to look someplace else to find that work.