A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a man shot by U.S. Border Patrol in Portland this month would be held in custody ahead of an upcoming trial.
In court and in filings submitted before the hearing, attorneys for Luis Nino-Moncada said the 33-year-old Venezuelan did not repeatedly ram the agents’ vehicle until after he was shot during a Jan. 8 immigration stop in East Portland. Federal prosecutors have said the immigration officers fired out of fear for their lives.
Crime tape surrounds a damaged vehicle rented and used by U.S. Border Patrol, at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol shooting of two people at building three of Adventist Health on the 10200 block of Southeast Main Street in Portland on Jan. 8, 2026.
Eli Imadali / OPB
According to the FBI, no video footage of the incident has been found so far as part of the investigation of the Jan. 8 shooting, making few details of the incident independently verifiable.
Nino-Moncado pleaded not guilty last week after a federal grand jury indicted him on two charges: aggravated assault on a federal employee with a deadly or dangerous weapon and depredation of federal property.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Armistead deemed Nino-Moncada was both a flight risk and a danger to the community at the conclusion of Wednesday’s hearing.
Combined, those proceedings and court filings provide new details about the shooting and raise questions about the timeline of events.
Related: What we know so far about the Border Patrol shooting in Portland
Around 2 p.m., in the parking lot of an Adventist Health medical facility in East Portland, six Border Patrol agents in four cars pulled up to the red Toyota truck. One of the officer’s rental cars, a black Hyundai, parked directly behind the truck and was significantly damaged in the incident.
One of the immigration officers, identified by federal prosecutors as BP-5, told Nino-Moncada and his passenger, Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras, to get out of the truck.
Images of the red Toyota Tacoma truck driven by Luis Nino-Moncada included in a U.S. Department of Justice court filing on Monday, Jan. 12. Moncada was one of two people shot in Portland by the U.S. Border Patrol last week.
Images via U.S Department of Justice court filing
After officers repeated the commands several times in English and Spanish, another agent “attempted to break the driver’s side window after many seconds of non-compliance,” federal prosecutors wrote in the Jan. 21 memo seeking Nino-Moncada’s continued detention.
“It’s only at the point that the window is being broken that the car moves. Most of the damage to the photographed vehicle occurs after he’s been shot,” Nino-Moncada’s defense attorney Michael Benson said of Border Patrol’s damaged vehicle.
Federal prosecutors gave a different version of events.
They say BP-5 asked Zambrano-Contreras to exit the vehicle, but she allegedly shook her head “no” before that officer saw Nino-Moncada move the truck into gear.
“Due to the truck turning as it backed up, the front right end of the truck moved across towards BP-5 and struck him in the left part of his chest as the angle of the truck changed,” federal prosecutors wrote in their Jan. 21 filing. “BP-5 then moved across the oncoming truck’s path and retrieved his weapon from its holster, while still in front of the oncoming vehicle.”
BP-5 then fired two shots into the driver’s side window, hitting Nino-Moncada in the arm and Zambrano-Contreras in the chest.
In court documents, Benson questioned whether his client “had any intent to assault or whether he was merely trying to flee.”
Benson and fellow federal public defender Peyton Lee also pushed back against the government’s previous assertions about Nino-Moncada’s connections to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
“The evidence supporting this contention is minimal,” the defense attorney wrote in a court filing Tuesday.
For their part, federal prosecutors pointed out Nino-Moncada’s driving history, noting that he has eight speeding tickets and a DUI from the past year.
Armistead, the magistrate judge, cited this driving history in determining Nino-Moncada was a danger to the community, saying he used “a vehicle in an unsafe manner repeatedly.”
Federal prosecutors also noted in court filings that an immigration judge in Colorado issued a final order of removal for Nino-Moncada in November 2024, because they say he’s unlawfully in the United States.
A criminal trial has been set for March.
