Skip to main content
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested two more asylum seekers outside Portland Immigration Court this morning, bringing the total arrests in the past week to four, according to federal court records. Within hours, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ordered ICE not to remove the two detained people from the state of Oregon.
The two men arrested Tuesday are citizens of Ecuador and Venezuela, respectively. In petitions for writs of habeas corpus filed with Simon, lawyers with the Innovation Law Lab say both men appeared for their immigration hearings in downtown Portland and were arrested outside the courtroom after their cases were dismissed.
That matches the tactic used in two previous arrests of Mexican nationals seeking asylum last week. (The initial arrest was first reported by WW; the second arrest was first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting.)
The increase in courtroom arrests comes as President Donald Trump seeks a crackdown on immigration and as protests of deportations flare nationwide—most notably in Los Angeles, where Trump has sent in the Marines.
The first person ICE arrested in Portland this month, a 24-year-old transgender woman from Michoacán, Mexico, is currently in solitary confinement in a Tacoma, Wash. detention facility, because she would otherwise be housed with male detainees and feared for her safety, according to documents filed by her attorneys.
The woman, who lived in Vancouver, Wash. is identified only by her initials OJM. Her case is the furthest along of the four now open: Lawyers with the Innovation Law Lab have sued the feds on OJM’s behalf and are asking U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio to order her release on bail.
In a response filed with Baggio, federal immigration lawyers say OJM is receiving due process, and that ICE is reviewing whether OJM has a credible fear of violence if she is deported. In a statement given to her attorneys, OJM says she fears she will be killed in Mexico.
“I cannot believe this is happening to me,” she said. “I came to the United States to be safe and free. When I arrived to Oregon, it was the first time that I have felt that I belonged anywhere.”