DHS: Asylum seeker detained in Portland will not be immediately deported
ICE agents used a Trump administration tactic to detain a transgender woman outside an immigration courtroom. She’s being held in Tacoma, awaiting a fear assessment.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The Department of Homeland Security says a transgender woman seeking asylum, detained immediately following an immigration hearing in a federal courtroom in Portland, is not at risk for immediate deportation.
The 24-year-old Mexican woman, identified as O-J-M by her attorneys, entered the United States in September 2023. She had been living in Oregon and Vancouver, Wash. She had been seeking asylum after members of a Mexican cartel raped and threatened to kill her because of her sexual orientation and gender identity, according to her attorneys.
On Thursday, DHS responded to a petition seeking O-J-M’s release.
In legal filings, a DHS and ICE officer said O-J-M claimed fear of returning to Mexico while she was being detained on Monday.
As a result, she is referred to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services for a ‘Credible Fear Interview’ to see if she has a verifiable fear of persecution or torture.
“As a result, I neither signed nor issued the [expedited removal] order,” said Chatham McCutcheon, a supervisory detention and deportation officer, in his written declaration. “ICE is not seeking imminent removal of Petitioner. There is no order of removal against Petitioner at this time.”
O-J-M is being held in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington. Her CFI has yet to be scheduled, according to the DHS filings.
Her detention followed a court hearing Monday in which DHS attorneys moved to dismiss O-J-M’s asylum case, clearing the way for her subsequent arrest and a potential expedited removal process which provides fewer legal protections.
In his declaration submitted in the federal case, McCutcheon wrote that O-J-M appeared for her immigration hearing without counsel.
In response to OJM’s attorney’s petition, DHS argues that the federal district court in Oregon doesn’t have jurisdiction over expedited removal cases, the detention was lawful and didn’t violate her Fifth Amendment rights, and it was unnecessary to determine if she would be at risk for expedited removal before her arrest.
The legal filing cites a Trump administration notice from January 2025 as a directive enabling these types of courthouse arrests.
Under its own interim internal guidance, ICE has permitted agents to conduct enforcement actions “in or near” courthouses if they think a targeted immigrant will be there.
Similar concerns about ICE courthouse arrests emerged during President Donald Trump’s first term, including a 2019 incident in Astoria where ICE agents pepper sprayed a group of people trying to stop a courthouse arrest. Oregon’s chief justice issued an order later that year barring civil arrests in state courthouses without judicial arrest warrants.
