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Frank Miranda, a U.S. citizen, says he was abducted by plain-clothed, masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement when he arrived at his Northeast Portland job last Thursday, kicked to the floor of a van, and taken to an ICE detention center.
The abduction is described in a letter sent today to Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, from Miranda’s lawyer, Michael Fuller, indicating Miranda’s intention to seek damages for his treatment.
The incident may be the first one documented in Portland where ICE has swept up an American citizen as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants, nationwide. It comes against the backdrop of increased immigration raids across the nation.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned the use of racial profiling as grounds for stopping people suspected of being in the country illegally.
In an interview, Miranda, 46, said he got up, drank a shake, said his prayers and drove from his home in Milwaukie to the metal shop where he works on Northeast Airport Way. He parked at 6:00 am and noticed lights behind him. Two men sprang from an unmarked, small SUV and called him by name, he says, asking for ID. They said they were from DHS and wanted to determine his citizenship.
“They looked like day laborers,” Miranda says. “They were not looking or acting professional at all.”
Both had thick Central American accents, said Miranda, whose mother is from Mexico. Miranda has spent time there and is familiar with the accents in the region, he says. His father is from New York, and Miranda was born in Glendale, Calif., in 1979, according to a copy of his birth certificate reviewed by WW.
Miranda took out his Oregon driver license, and one of the men snatched it, he says.
“I didn’t pull it out to give it to him,” Miranda said. “I pulled it out to show it to him. I knew something was wrong right there.”
Miranda took out his phone and began filming. In a 30-second video shot before agents took the device, a masked agent says that Miranda is an “overstay,” perhaps meaning he had remained in the U.S. beyond the expiration of an visa. When Miranda resists, another agent, off camera, threatens to “get the dog.”
A third agent appeared with the animal, and they began asking Miranda if he had been a crew member on a boat. Miranda had worked on a commercial fishing vessel from 2008 to 2013, he says. The agent displayed a picture of a man on a boat, he says.
“It looked like me,” Miranda says.
Fuller’s letter to Noem recounts some of the conversation.
“Where were you born? And don’t lie to me,” one of the agents asked.
“California,” Miranda responded. He asked where ICE got its information.
“Wherever we got it from doesn’t matter,” the agent said.
The agents handcuffed him and forced him into a van that had appeared earlier. Inside, an agent who appears to have spoken no English kicked his legs out from under him and told him he would be sitting on the floor.
“They were high-fiving,” Miranda says.
The agents took him to the ICE facility on South Macadam Avenue, where he was fingerprinted and held for several hours. Miranda says he refused to talk to an agent there without a lawyer present, and, eventually, the agent relented.
“He tried to tell me that other people have used my name,” Miranda says. “I was like, just save it, dude. You’re not going to rattle me.”
The agent refused to provide his name or badge number, Miranda says.
“After several hours, Mr. Miranda was driven back to his place of employment without being given any legitimate reason for his abduction,” Fuller says in his letter to Noem, who is expected to arrive in Portland today for a visit to the ICE facility where Miranda was detained.
ICE’s media department didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment on Miranda’s abduction.
