If the motion is granted, Oregon would join Washington, D.C., and Colorado in preventing ICE’s practice of making warrantless arrests of people in Oregon.
“Federal agents have been terrorizing our communities for months,” said Isa Peña, the director of strategy at Innovation Law Lab. “We’re going to court to demand what the Constitution requires: accountability.”
ICE arrests went up from 113 in 2024 to more than 1,100 arrests in 2025, the Capital Chronicle previously reported. In December, homeland security agents revealed in court that the federal government has brought ICE agents from around the country to the Portland area as a part of a major operation to detain immigrants.
The case, M-J-M-A v. Wamsley, was filed on behalf of a farmworker on her way to work who was detained by ICE without a warrant in Woodburn on Oct. 30. She is using her initials in the court documents out of privacy concerns.
In court documents, she describes going to work with her son, nephew and other farmworkers when ICE agents pulled over their vehicle, broke the driver’s side window, unlocked the doors of the vehicle and yelled for everyone to get out. They broke her cell phone and punched her nephew as she watched.
She was released from custody after being taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, but she’s still afraid ICE will arrest her again.
The other plaintiff is Victor Cruz Gamez, a Hillsboro construction worker who was driving home from work on Oct. 14 when three ICE agents detained him, even though he showed them his work permit.
“I gave him my work permit, he looked at it and said it meant nothing to them, that I was still ‘an illegal,’” Cruz Gamez said in court filings describing the incident. “The officers then handcuffed me, chained my waist and ankles and put me in an SUV.”
Cruz Gamez was taken to the Portland ICE field office where agents asked him to sign off on his deportation. He refused, and was taken to the Tacoma facility for three weeks until a federal judge ordered his release. He left with an ankle monitor and with reporting requirements to ICE.
“I am the wage earner in my family and my inability to work has impacted us greatly,” he said in court documents. “My wife and I have a lot of fear that ICE will arrest and detain me again. We are afraid even to go to the grocery store. I have started seeing a therapist to help me manage the fear and anxiety this event has caused me.”
The lawsuit is a class action case, meaning the plaintiffs are representing people who have been arrested or will be arrested without a warrant and without the legally required assessment of flight risk.
Innovation Law Lab is a part of another lawsuit, Clear Clinic v. Noem, which challenges federal immigration agencies’ ability to deny people access to legal counsel before transferring them out of state.
