Campaign Action
Carlos Bolanos and his coworker George Cardenas were painting the inside of a Salem, Oregon, home when two ICE agents stepped inside, without their permission and without a warrant, to demand ID from Bolanos, with one saying that “I have reason to believe you’re not in the country legally.” Cardenas began shooting the video when the agents refused to identify themselves and defiantly claimed that “we don’t need a warrant to come in this home. No one lives here”:
One of the agents insisted that there was no one living in the house and, because it was vacant, they didn't need a warrant. But Cardenas said he never invited any of them inside and continued to ask them to leave. They refused.
"At what point did I say he is here?" Cardenas calmly asked the agents, who are dressed in plainclothes. "At what point did I say come in? At what point, can you please tell me?"
Cardenas asked repeatedly for the agents' names, but they stood silent or declined to provide them.
"We don't need to introduce ourselves by our names. There's no law that says we have to," one of the agents said.
"There's a law that says you can't come into private property. Did you know that?" Cardenas asked.
"That is correct and you are right," the agent replied.
While the agents stood around, the co-workers said they were calling the homeowner to come to the property. Cardenas warned them that the owner would tell them to leave.
But by the end of the nearly eight-minute video, ICE agents had removed the paintbrush and cell phone from Bolanos’ hands to cuff him and place him in an ICE vehicle. “Oregon’s two U.S. senators denounced the agents’ actions. Rep. Diego Hernandez, a Democrat representing Portland in the Oregon House of Representatives, tweeted: ‘They had no warrant, ICE is out of line.’”
According to NBC News, Bolanos was later released from ICE custody “pending further investigation,” but Mat Dos Santos, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, calls this sort of incident, “all too common. We see it time and time again where ICE officers actively engaged in pursuing someone show up in plain clothes, don’t display badges, and get incredibly aggressive when met with natural shock by those they are targeting.”
Just last month, another citizen video captured plainclothes agents aggressively pursuing another Oregon man they assumed to be undocumented, but was actually a U.S. citizen. These ICE agents also refused to identify themselves or show a warrant. Isidro Andrade-Tafolla was spared from further harassment in large part due to the bystanders who were filming and questioning the ICE agents, who scattered off like roaches when they realized they had the wrong brown guy. Santos:
He lauded Cardenas for knowing to tell the agents that they didn't have the right to be in the home without a warrant and said they should have listened to him when he asked them to leave.
"You have to say, 'Yes, come in.' But even if he had consented, you can revoke your consent, which he does repeatedly," Dos Santos said.
Under Donald Trump, former Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly, and acting ICE director Thomas Homan, an unshackled ICE has terrorized immigrant and brown communities in truly deplorable ways, including stalking people outside churches and waging an anti-immigrant smear campaign. And like Trump’s administration, these agents believe they are accountable to no one. In a letter to deputy field office director Elizabeth Godfrey, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley demand answers:
Americans do not lose their constitutional protection from warrantless search and seizure simply because ICE believes they may be immigrants. The actions of the ICE agents involved in Mr. Bolanos’ arrests are counter to the very policies and practices the Department of Homeland Security claims to uphold. The behavior of these agents in recent events, taken together, suggest that ICE’s claim that these are “targeted enforcement actions” is demonstrably untrue.