Federal immigration officers have again arrested an asylum-seeker outside Portland Immigration Court.
The man, identified as Y-Z-L-H in federal court records, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after attending a required hearing on his asylum case.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security not to remove the man from Oregon.
It’s the second time this week officers with ICE have detained a person at the immigration court. In both cases, the asylum-seekers showed up to the required hearings, only to have their cases dropped before being arrested.
Attorneys for both asylum-seekers argue their clients are being unlawfully ejected from their cases in an effort to deprive them of the due process rights they’re entitled to as part of their asylum claims.
A banner that reads "Save OJM" outside the ICE facility on S Macadam Ave. in Portland, Ore. A woman, known in court documents as "O-J-M" was arrested outside of Portland Immigration Court earlier this week.
Alex Zielinski / OPB
On Monday, ICE arrested O-J-M immediately after she attended a hearing in Portland as part of her asylum case. O-J-M is a transgender woman from Mexico who is seeking asylum because she was sexually assaulted and targeted by members of a drug cartel, according to her habeas petition.
The situation for Y-Z-L-H is somewhat similar. He’s also from Mexico and showed up at a port of entry in El Paso, Texas, in 2023 after La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel, threatened to kill him. He was granted a work permit and has been living in Newport while complying with the terms of his immigration parole, which include regular check-ins with ICE, according to his petition.
“[ICE] commenced removal proceedings against him in immigration court, entitling him to present his asylum claim with the due process rights,” Y-Z-L-H’s petition states. “Yet, in a deceptive sleight of hand [ICE] now seek to eject Y-Z-L-H from his own asylum case, detain him, and transfer him away from the District of Oregon so that they can rapidly deport him.”
Related: Judge demands answers after ICE removes asylum-seeker from Oregon
The Innovation Law Lab’s Stephen Manning, an attorney representing both asylum-seekers, has argued in the habeas petitions that these arrests by ICE are not based on case-by-case reasoning, but rather an unlawful interpretation of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year that seek expedited removal.
Manning could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
Y-Z-L-H was arrested Thursday after ICE attorneys dismissed his case entirely. Just like with O-J-M, that move effectively vacated the legal protections that come with an asylum case.
“The ICE agents did not offer him any opportunity to be heard prior to arresting and detaining him,” according to a petition for habeas corpus filed by his attorneys, which asks ICE bring Y-Z-L-H before a federal judge in Oregon, in his case Simon.
Officials with ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Y-Z-L-H’s case. Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that arrests at immigration courts are a shift in policy and people who are detained will still have the chance to advance their case.
“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,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
In his order Thursday, Judge Simon wrote that if federal immigration officials had already removed Y-Z-L-H from Oregon, they must “state the exact date, and time” as well as the reason why ICE “believed that such a move was immediately necessary.”
A similar order was issued in O-J-M’s case, but immigration officials had already removed her from the state. Court records last indicated she was being held at the detention facility in Tacoma, Washington.
