Body-camera footage from a pre-dawn immigration enforcement operation in rural Oregon reveals federal agents breaking car windows and deploying facial recognition software to identify agricultural workers without a warrant, according to court documents and video reviewed by civil rights attorneys.
The October 30, 2025 incident in Woodburn, south of Portland, has become the centerpiece of a federal lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics. A federal judge ruled in February that the arrests were unlawful and appeared to violate fundamental legal protections, marking a rare rebuke of ICE's enforcement methods.
The operation began when agents stationed themselves outside an apartment complex known to house farm workers. An ICE officer identified in court as JB testified that the agency used an internal app called Elite, developed by tech firm Palantir, to identify locations where immigration targets might be found. Agents then focused on a white van after running its license plates and determining the registered owner might be undocumented.
Officers decided to follow the vehicle but never confirmed the driver was actually the owner. JB stated in court that the presence of multiple passenger pickups seemed suspicious, suggesting possible human trafficking or smuggling. Immigrant advocates later noted the van was simply a carpool to a farm job.
What followed was captured on body camera. At approximately 5:30 a.m., with dawn still hours away, an officer shouted "Bust it. Bust it." before smashing the van's side window. A second officer gave commands in Spanish to open the window, but the glass shattered within seconds, faster than occupants could comply.
The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, a 45-year-old farm worker identified in court documents as MJMA, immediately invoked her legal rights. Speaking in Spanish, she stated "We don't have to answer" and indicated she wanted a lawyer. She called 911 requesting a Spanish-speaking dispatcher, instructing the other passengers to remain silent.
An officer heard on the body camera said to a colleague: "She wants to lawyer up. She doesn't want to identify herself, we'll just take her."
As MJMA remained in the vehicle attempting to communicate with emergency services, officers demanded she hang up her phone. When she did not exit the car, another officer pulled her forcibly from the vehicle. MJMA later testified that officers broke her phone during the extraction. All seven occupants were detained. Six were handcuffed and forced to sit on pavement against a wall. An older woman was placed on a nearby bench.
Once the workers were immobilized, an agent placed a phone close to one man's face while another officer shined a bright flashlight directly on him. The phone remained positioned for approximately 12 seconds, apparently scanning his features. Audio from the body camera captured an officer saying: "Mobile Fortify couldn't find him."
Mobile Fortify is the Department of Homeland Security's facial recognition application, used by federal law enforcement to scan faces and cross-reference them against various databases. During court testimony, an ICE agent named DR acknowledged he did not know which databases the app accessed or what its accuracy rate was.
A female agent identified as MK testified that she performed a "facial recognition mobile query" on MJMA and received a match with someone named Maria. The agent stated: "I wasn't sure if it was her or not." When officers repeatedly called out the name Maria, MJMA did not respond. A second facial scan of MJMA produced a different match.
MJMA's actual name is not Maria.
MK testified that she believed MJMA was illegally present in the country based on her Spanish-language communication and the facial recognition "possible match." The agent's additional facial scanning was not captured on the body camera footage recording the scene.
In a February ruling, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai found that ICE officers had engaged in misconduct and issued a preliminary decision restricting agents across Oregon from making arrests without warrants. The judge criticized officers' facial recognition use, noting the technology "can be inaccurate and produce individuals who are here in accordance with immigration laws."
Kasubhai also found multiple false statements in ICE's official reports about the Woodburn stop. Officers claimed MJMA had entered the country unlawfully, when in fact she had arrived on a valid temporary visa. The judge described the agency's assertions of possible smuggling as "unfounded" and noted that ICE's reports falsely characterized the initial stop as consensual.
The judge further found that officers "did not provide any meaningfully reasonable time for the driver to comply" before destroying the vehicle's window.
During cross-examination, officer CM, whose body camera recorded the encounter, admitted he did not know the identity of any passengers when the van was first pulled over. Another agent, JB, disclosed under questioning that his team received a verbal order to target eight arrests per day. The admission provided rare documented evidence of ICE arrest quotas.
Four of the seven detainees were later deported. A DHS spokesperson confirmed that three of those removed had accepted voluntary departure and received full due process. MJMA, whose asylum case was ongoing at the time of the stop, remains part of the active litigation.
When asked about the facial recognition usage and the operation's legality, DHS did not address the specific questions. Instead, the agency defended Mobile Fortify as a "lawful law-enforcement tool developed under the Trump administration" that queries "limited" immigration datasets and "operates with a deliberately high matching threshold." The statement asserted the app is used "in accordance with all applicable legal authorities."
Nelly Garcia Orjuela, staff attorney with Innovation Law Lab, which represents MJMA in the lawsuit, said the footage exposed a systematic disregard for legal rights. "The officers didn't like that she asserted her right to remain silent. You have to know who you're targeting before you arrest somebody. That is how due process works."
Stephen Manning, the organization's executive director, called the body camera evidence a clear illustration of ICE's "arrest first, justify later" approach. "She knew the law better than the agents. She asked them to follow the law, and they actually violated the law in response."
Author James Rodriguez: "A judge already called this arrest unlawful, yet DHS doubles down defending facial recognition technology it admittedly doesn't understand. That's not law enforcement, that's a surveillance state with a badge."
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