Judge finds ICE "routinely violated" his order against warrantless arrests in Oregon, says an officer lied in arrest records
ICE reported 13 warrantless arrests in six months. The judge found "significantly more" and ordered unredacted files and body-cam footage.
A federal judge ruled Monday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has "routinely violated" his order against warrantless immigration arrests in Oregon, and found that at least one ICE officer lied in an official arrest record to make an illegal arrest look legal.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai granted a motion to enforce the preliminary injunction he issued Feb. 4 in M-J-M-A v. Hernandez (No. 6:25-cv-02011, D. Or.), a class action over ICE arrests in Oregon. That order bars ICE from making warrantless civil immigration arrests in the state unless officers decide, before the arrest, that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. Federal law already requires that.
ICE's numbers didn't hold up
ICE arrested 574 people in Oregon between Feb. 5 and July 31, according to the ruling. Of those, 504 were arrested out in the community, not in jails or prisons. Yet ICE's monthly reports to the court listed only 13 warrantless arrests from February through early August. After two days of evidentiary hearings in September, Kasubhai found ICE made "significantly more than thirteen."
At oral argument, ICE's lawyers said the agency had actually turned over records on about 25 warrantless arrests. The court said it had no evidence of those disclosures.
The ruling walks through three arrests the court found were warrantless:
- A falsified report. An officer's report described a warrant-based arrest. On the stand, he admitted the report was wrong and called it an oversight. Kasubhai rejected that, finding the officer "lied in an official record to facilitate the impression he was conducting a lawful warrant-based arrest." He called the purported warrant "grossly defective."
- The wrong man. ICE's report on a June arrest listed the wrong vehicle and the wrong location. The court concluded ICE's "incompetence targeted the wrong person." The man sat in a Tacoma detention center until Sept. 10, when a federal judge in Washington granted his habeas petition. ICE argued an old 2023 warrant covered the arrest, but offered no evidence to back that up, the court found.
- An unreliable report. A third man arrested in July was released the same day on a habeas order. The court found ICE's paperwork on that arrest "not reliable."
The court also found ICE filled arrest reports with boilerplate, treated immigration status itself as proof someone might flee, and repeatedly mislabeled warrantless arrests as warrant-based ones.
"This presumption no longer holds"
ICE denied violating the order, arguing it had "complied with the plain language" of the injunction and that the court lacked power to modify it. ICE's arrest data and its officer's sworn testimony said otherwise.
Courts normally presume government officials act in good faith and follow the rules. Kasubhai wrote that for ICE in this case, "This presumption no longer holds." He added: "One must earn credibility by acting with integrity."
What ICE must do now
- Re-send the order to officers, employees and contractors every 30 days, and certify each re-send to the court
- Re-produce all past arrest records without redactions, and stop redacting future ones
- Turn over arrest warrants (Form I-200), arrest reports (Form I-213), documents served on the person and the underlying evidence for every arrest since the injunction took effect, or state under oath that none exist
- Turn over body-camera footage for arrests on or after Sept. 1, or state under oath that none exists
- Produce all of it within seven days of a good-faith request from the plaintiffs
The judge declined, for now, to bar ICE from relying on a Jan. 28 memo from ICE chief Todd Lyons, but said plaintiffs can renew that request if evidence shows Oregon agents used it.
Who wins, who loses, what's next
People arrested by ICE in Oregon, and their lawyers, now get a full paper trail and video to test whether an arrest was legal. ICE loses the benefit of the doubt in this courtroom: its paperwork now gets checked against footage and sworn testimony.
The order doesn't stop ICE from arresting people with valid warrants, and it does not hold ICE in contempt. The government's appeal of the February injunction is still pending. ICE's first 30-day certification is the next thing to watch.
Kasubhai noted Oregon is not alone. He cited federal courts in Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and California's Eastern District, including a United Farm Workers case, that have also found ICE's records unreliable or had to enforce orders against the agency.
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