A 24-year-old asylum seeker was detained Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers outside a Portland immigration courtroom after she appeared for a scheduled court date.
The woman, who is from Mexico and has been living in Vancouver, Washington, is now asking that she be brought before a federal judge in Oregon.
The woman’s attorney, Stephen Manning, told OPB late Monday he did not know where she was being detained.
The ICE building in Portland, June 29, 2021.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
In a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed Monday, the woman identified as O-J-M, asked a federal judge to find the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “attempts to detain, transfer, and deport her are arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the law.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that arrests at immigration courts are part of a policy shift. Sec. Kristi Noem is reversing the Biden administration’s “catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens” to be in the United States, according to DHS’s statement.
“Most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday. “If they have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings, but if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation.”
Across the country, immigration authorities have stepped up arrests at courthouses where people with legal protections or pursuing asylum claims are required to show up to argue their cases before an immigration judge.
“In Mexico in 2021, O-J-M was raped by several people when she was taken away by armed men belonging to the Knights Templar,” a cartel, the petition notes. “They threatened to kill her because O-J-M is a transgender woman. Fearing for her life, she fled and sought asylum in the United States in September 2023.”
O-J-M came to the Calexico, California port of entry to seek asylum, her petition states. She was arrested, detained and then released. She attended several check-ins with ICE and applied for asylum Feb. 6, 2025, according to her writ.
Around April 21, immigration officials “commenced removal proceedings against” O-J-M and set a June 2 hearing at Portland Immigration Court. That triggered her asylum application to move from the asylum office at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to the immigration court itself.
When O-J-M appeared for Monday’s hearing, ICE attorneys moved to dismiss her case altogether instead of moving forward. ICE then sought to place her in expedited removal proceedings, O-J-M’s petition states.
“After exiting the courtroom and while in the courtroom lobby, several ICE agents arrested [O-J-M],” the petition states. “They did not provide her any process or, even though a pro bono lawyer was available at the immigration court, access to counsel. The ICE agents did not offer her any opportunity to be heard prior to arresting and detaining her.”
