ICE agents arrested Victor Cruz Gamez without a warrant in Hillsboro, Oregon, and held him more than three weeks despite his valid work permit

On October 14, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled over and arrested Victor Cruz Gamez, a longtime Hillsboro, Oregon, construction worker and grandfather who had lived in the United States since 1999, as he drove home from work. Cruz Gamez said in a later sworn declaration that he showed the agents his employment authorization document and that one of them looked at it and "said it meant nothing to them, that I was still 'an illegal.'" The agents handcuffed him and chained his waist and ankles, put him in an SUV, and took him to ICE's Portland field office, where he refused to sign off on his own deportation. He was transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, early the next morning. No warrant was issued before the arrest and no individualized determination was made that he was likely to escape before one could be obtained, as the Immigration and Nationality Act requires.

Cruz Gamez was living in the country lawfully. His attorney, Julia Braker, told Oregon Public Broadcasting that he held a work permit valid through 2029 and had been granted deferred action, meaning the government had already determined he likely qualified for the visa application then pending and would not be deported. His family said ICE agents told him during his detention that they had been looking for a different Victor Cruz who had a record of driving under the influence.

On October 24, 2025, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici wrote to Cammilla Wamsley, director of ICE's Seattle field office, demanding Cruz Gamez's immediate release. They wrote that he had been "fully shackled — wrists, ankles, and waist" during an arrest carried out while he had a fractured foot and a heart condition requiring a pacemaker, and criticized what they called ICE's "pattern of willful negligence and callousness" in detaining people with no criminal record or valid basis for arrest. Bonamici's office said it received no response.

The arrest fell inside "Operation Black Rose," the federal immigration-enforcement campaign in the Portland area that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons later said ran from September 27, 2025 to March 1, 2026, involved more than 100 federal officers drawn from ICE, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and produced more than 1,100 arrests across Oregon.

Updates

2025-10-28 — Immigration judge declined to hold a bond hearing for Cruz Gamez [1]

Immigration judge Tammy Fitting determined she lacked jurisdiction to set bond for Cruz Gamez, closing the route by which he could have been released on bail. A federal court in the Western District of Washington had ruled the month before that such declarations of non-jurisdiction were unlawful; Tacoma immigration judges continued to issue them anyway. Fitting did not respond to Oregon Public Broadcasting's request for comment.

2025-10-30 — Cruz Gamez joined a class action over ICE's warrantless Oregon arrests [3, 7]

The Portland nonprofit law firm Innovation Law Lab filed M-J-M-A v. Wamsley in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon on behalf of Cruz Gamez and a Woodburn farmworker identified by her initials, who had been arrested without a warrant that same day. The suit alleged that ICE was operating a policy of making warrantless arrests without probable cause of flight risk, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act, and sought to represent a class of everyone in Oregon arrested that way.

2025-11-07 — Federal court ordered Cruz Gamez released from ICE detention [2, 3]

Cruz Gamez was released on bond from the Tacoma facility following an order from a federal district judge, after 24 days in custody. He left with an ankle monitor and reporting requirements to ICE. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, who had visited him at the facility earlier that week, said Cruz Gamez "never should have been detained by ICE."

2026-02-04 — Judge enjoined ICE's warrantless arrests in Oregon and certified a class [4, 5]

U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai granted a preliminary injunction from the bench barring ICE from making warrantless civil immigration arrests in Oregon without a pre-arrest, individualized determination of probable cause that the person is likely to escape, and provisionally certified the plaintiffs' class. Kasubhai said agents' conduct in Oregon, including drawing guns on people being detained for civil immigration violations, had been "violent and brutal," and told the courtroom that "due process calls for those who have great power to exercise great restraint."

2026-02-27 — Judge issued a written opinion finding an unlawful ICE pattern and practice [6, 7]

Kasubhai followed the bench ruling with a 52-page opinion and order granting the preliminary injunction and certifying the class, finding that ICE's warrantless arrests without the required escape-risk determination were "not tentative or interlocutory" but "the consummation of defendants' decision-making process to engage in this unlawful conduct" — final agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act. He wrote that officers "copy and paste language and broadly cite general immigration violations or information obtained after the time of arrest" instead of documenting facts known at the time, and rejected the government's argument that the case was moot, saying the defendants had "a longstanding history of noncompliance with these same laws." The order required the defendants to document every warrantless civil arrest in Oregon and report to the court every 30 days, and certified a class reaching back to September 28, 2025.

2026-04-06 — Government appealed the injunction to the Ninth Circuit [7]

The government defendants — named in the February order as acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi and ICE Seattle field office director Cammilla Wamsley — appealed the preliminary injunction and the provisional class certification to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, docketed as No. 26-02090. Briefing in that appeal was still ongoing months later.

2026-06-24 — District court certified two classes; government appealed again [7]

Kasubhai granted full class certification, certifying a "Warrantless Arrest Class" and an "Unassessed Escape Risk Subclass" covering people arrested in Oregon since September 28, 2025 without a warrant and without an individualized probable-cause determination. He rejected the government's arguments that the plaintiffs lacked standing, that the injunction was barred by 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1), and that the classes were impermissibly "fail-safe." The government had moved on June 12, 2026 to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction, and filed a further notice of appeal on July 6, 2026 along with a motion to stay the district court proceedings. As of August 20, 2026 the case remained ongoing and Ninth Circuit briefing was not complete.