Immigration rights attorneys Friday night filed a motion urging a judge to halt a practice by federal officers of making immigration arrests without warrants in Oregon in a case that already has elicited testimony about arrest quotas and warrants drafted after arrests had already occurred.
If a judge grants the motion, Oregon would join Washington, D.C. and Colorado in restricting the practice, their lawyers said.
The motion is filed on behalf of two people who were arrested by masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers either on their way to or from work in Woodburn and Hillsboro last fall.
Their lawyers are also seeking class-action status on behalf of all Oregonians arrested by immigration officers without a warrant and without the legally required individual assessment that someone poses a risk of fleeing or escaping.
Federal immigration agents arrested at least 1,100 people in Oregon last year - a significant increase from the 113 arrests recorded in all of 2024, according to the Deportation Data Project’s database that is compiled by lawyers and academics through public records requests. Nearly 600 arrests were made in the state last October, according to court records.
Early in the morning of Oct. 30, a 45-year-old woman identified only as MJMA was riding in a van that ICE officers stopped in Woodburn after following it from an apartment complex that federal officers described as “target rich,” according to court testimony. They pulled the woman out from a back passenger seat when she refused to give her name and handcuffed her.
She asked for an “abogado,” Spanish for lawyer. They arrested her and moved her quickly to the ICE detention center in Tacoma but released her the next day without any conditions or explanation, according to testimony and court records.
She had entered the U.S. at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing on Jan. 19,2025, with a B2 visa that expired on March 21. The visa covers tourism, family visits and temporary medical trips. ICE officials said she had overstayed her visa and that was the reason for her arrest, once they figured out her identity.
An ICE supervisor from Nebraska who was working at the Portland ICE office testified that he created and signed a warrant for the arrest of MJMA after she arrived at the office, although he knew officers had already arrested her without a warrant.
MJMA , a Mexican national, was one of at least 35 people arrested during a “dragnet’’ in Woodburn that day, according to attorney Stephen Manning, executive director of Innovation Law Lab.
A federal officer testified that from mid-October to mid-November his team of immigration enforcement officers had an unwritten quota to arrest at least eight people a day. The team members variously referred to their work as part of “Operation Fortifying the Border,” “Operation Black Rose” and “Operation Portland Sweep.”
“Their own agents admitted it: quotas, manufactured paperwork, entire neighborhoods targeted. This is by design,” Manning said in a statement. “You can’t just grab people and figure out the justification later. But that’s exactly what ICE is doing.”
Victor Cruz Gamez, 55, was arrested in Hillsboro on his way home from his construction work on Oct. 14 by three masked immigration officers. He saw lights flashing from a car behind him and pulled over to let the unmarked car go by, but the car stopped behind him and three officers got out. One wore a blue jacket with “HSI” on it. He said they banged on his windows and asked him in English if he was Victor Cruz and demanded he get out of the truck.
They walked him to the back of his truck and examined his driver’s license and the work permit he showed them. He’s owned a remodeling construction business for the past year and a half, he said in a sworn declaration. One officer looked at the permit, told him it meant nothing to him and said Cruz Gomez was still “an illegal,” the declaration said.
He was ultimately detained at the Tacoma detention center for three weeks - pressured repeatedly to self-deport - until a judge ordered his release. The immigration judge ordered that he report regularly to an ICE office, according to court records.
Cruz Gamez, a Mexican national, co-owns a house in Hillsboro with his wife and has lived in the United States since 1990. He has three grown children. One son and daughter are lawful permanent residents and another daughter has status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA. He has no criminal record, has lived in the U.S. more than 25 years, has work authorization and owns his own construction business, according to his lawyers.
As a victim of fraud in 2012 who assisted in the prosecution of the crime, he applied for a U visa in May and received deferred action, suggesting he met all the requirements and a visa would be approved once available, according to court papers. The special U visa is provided to immigrants who report crimes, are victims of crimes or assist police in prosecuting another.
Juana Avila Iso, a 47-year-old Cottage Grove woman who owns a store called Juanita’s Latina that sells Latino food, submitted a declaration to the court describing how masked immigration officers pulled her over on Nov. 5, and asked where she was born and told her she was under arrest. One reached through her open window, unlocked her door and dragged her out, she said.
“They pushed me to the ground, and I felt their knees on my back, forcing me down,” her declaration said. The officers handcuffed her and put her in one of their cars. They then searched through her wallet and eventually removed her handcuffs so she could show them her permanent resident card. Only then, did they let her go, she said. She reported the stop to the local police.
Avila Iso said she came to the United States from Guatemala at age 14 and obtained her lawful permanent residency in 2017.
“Every time I leave the house, I leave with fear. I am constantly vigilant, checking my surroundings,” she said. “When I see a car I don’t recognize, I feel an immediate fear that it’s ICE coming back for me.”
The Innovation Law Lab lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai for a court order to halt what they and some federal judges in Oregon already have described in individual cases as an unlawful practice of “arrest first, justify later.
Federal government lawyers have not yet responded to the motions and a hearing has not been scheduled.
In MJMA’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Ratcliffe had argued in court that the federal officers followed federal statutes, regulations and policies in arresting the woman. Agents can briefly detain people for questioning if they have a reasonable suspicion that they’re in the U.S. illegally, he argued.
During her hearing, Kasubhai said that while the federal officiers didn’t seem as if they acted malevolently, he added, “We’re dealing with a system that may very well have violated the law.”
In November, a federal judge in Denver ordered federal immigration officers to stop making arrests in Colorado without a warrant, unless someone detained posed a risk of fleeing. Last month, a federal judge in the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction barring warrantless arrests of immigrants unless authorities believe the person is likely to escape.
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