Multnomah County is facing allegations that sheriff deputies continued to hold a man in custody for 22 hours after a federal judge ordered his release. The man was later turned over to U.S. Marshals, who transferred him to federal immigration officials.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Portland, attorneys for Gerson Fernando Molina-Orantes claim the county and 13 sheriff deputies identified as “John Does” intentionally kept Molina-Orantes incarcerated. The lawsuit claims the reason they did so, “after a federal judge had ordered his release was for civil immigration enforcement purposes.”
Multnomah County Justice Center, in Portland, Ore., July, 2023.
Caden Perry / OPB
The case raises questions about the relationship between Multnomah County and the U.S. Marshals Service. For years, the federal government has contracted with the county to house pretrial defendants facing federal crimes. At the same time, the county is subject to Oregon’s decades-old sanctuary law that prevents using local resources for immigration enforcement.
On March 5, Gerson Fernando Molina-Orantes was charged with the federal crime of illegal reentry. The Guatemalan was previously removed from the United States in 2020, according to court documents from Molina-Orantes’ criminal case.
He was arrested on April 16 and held in custody. A federal magistrate ordered Molina-Orantes’s release after an April 23 detention hearing. The judge found the 29-year-old had been living in Beaverton for at least the past three years and has no criminal history.
According to the ruling, he has siblings and extended family who live in the area and “worked full-time in the construction field, and reports no history of physical, mental health, or substance abuse issues.”
But federal prosecutors asked a federal district court judge to review that ruling. Attorneys for the government argued Molina-Orantes was the “personal driver, bodyguard and employee” of a close relative prosecutors had charged with money laundering. And prosecutors alleged that because of that, he “poses a clear risk of flight.”
On April 24, the second federal judge also agreed prosecutors had not met their burden to hold Molina-Orantes and ordered his release.
Instead, he spent another 22 hours in custody, according to the civil lawsuit Molina-Orantes filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
The evening of April 24, he went from the federal courthouse back to the custody of the county sheriff, where deputies drove him “in handcuffs, a waist chain, and ankle cuffs” to the county’s Inverness Jail in East Portland, where he spent the evening.
On April 25, Molina-Orantes was taken to the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland and placed in a cell, he alleges in his lawsuit. After that, deputies put him in a vehicle and took him back to the federal courthouse, where he was again placed in a holding cell.
Roughly two hours later, he was again handcuffed and, according to the lawsuit, “moved out of the cell and into a parking garage.”
“Mr. Molina Orantes was handed to two U.S. Marshals where he remained in the same constraints,” the lawsuit states.
“The U.S. Marshals proceeded to immediately transport Mr. Molina Orantes to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Molina Orantes was subsequently transported to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.”
A spokesperson for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment citing the pending litigation. The county, which is also named in the lawsuit, did not return OPB’s request for comment.
Records show Molina-Orantes is no longer being held at the Northwest Detention Center.
MariRuth Petzing, an attorney at the Oregon Law Center who is representing Molina-Orantes, said he’s back in Guatemala.
“This case addresses basic constitutional protections,” Petzing said. “When a judge orders someone released, they should be released.”
