A federal judge in Oregon found that an ICE officer lied in an official arrest report and that the agency violated the court’s order limiting warrantless arrests, and he ordered ICE to hand over arrest warrants, evidence and body-camera footage from immigration arrests in the state since September 1.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, a Biden appointee, also withdrew the government’s “presumption of regularity,” the legal assumption that officials act properly, in the case. “This presumption no longer holds for defendants,” he wrote in the Monday order, according to a report published Tuesday.
What the judge found about the ICE arrest report
An ICE officer wrote that agents recognized a passenger before stopping a vehicle in Hood River and already had a warrant for him. At a September hearing, the officer admitted he copied much of the narrative from a report about the driver and did not change the details. He testified that agents did not know the passenger was in the car when they stopped it and had no warrant for him at that point.
“He lied in an official record to facilitate the impression he was conducting a lawful warrant-based arrest,” Kasubhai wrote. The report also placed the arrest in Napa, California, rather than Hood River, Oregon, and listed the wrong car model. OPB reported that the judge called it “sloppy work.”
Arrests and the February order
The case is a class action brought by the nonprofit Innovation Law Lab. In February, Kasubhai issued a preliminary injunction that allows warrantless civil immigration arrests in Oregon only when agents first determine that the person is likely to flee. It also requires ICE to send documentation of those arrests to the plaintiffs.
The government reported 13 warrantless arrests in Oregon over six months. Kasubhai concluded the real number was “significantly more than 13.” He also found that agents sometimes treated immigration status alone as proof of flight risk, despite the order’s requirement for individual assessments.
What ICE must do now
- Produce administrative arrest warrants, supporting evidence, documents given to detainees and body-camera footage from civil immigration arrests in Oregon since September 1.
- Turn over previously disclosed material without redactions.
- Repeat the court’s instructions to relevant employees every 30 days.
“Written declarations are convenient, but insufficient on their own when witnesses are willing to lie,” the judge wrote. The published report did not include a response from DHS or ICE.
Why the ruling matters beyond Oregon
The order applies only in Oregon. Losing the presumption of regularity means the court will no longer accept government declarations at face value in this case, and ICE will have to back up its account of arrests with records and video. Courts in other districts have limited warrantless ICE arrests in recent months, and another federal judge vacated ICE’s immigration court arrest policy in October. In an unrelated case in September, a federal judge held DHS in contempt.