Last Thursday morning, a group of farmworkers was reportedly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents near Woodburn, a move that has sparked concern and prompted legal action from various advocates. KATU News reported that the workers were on their way to a blueberry farm in Canby when ICE stopped their van around 6 a.m. last Thursday. During the intervention, agents allegedly shattered the driver's side window to apprehend four individuals—three men and one woman.
Further details emerged from a report by Oregon Live, which revealed that the arrested workers were Guatemalan. This marked the first widely reported incident of ICE arrests among Oregon fieldworkers since the onset of President Donald Trump’s second term. Earlier incidents cited include an arrest of a parent in Beaverton and multiple detentions at a Yamhill County vineyard services company.
Advocacy group Oregon For All described the event as a “swarming” of the workers' van, with a statement obtained by the Statesman Journal indicating that witnesses immediately called the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition hotline to report the incident. The detained workers were subsequently taken to a Portland ICE facility, where attorneys from Innovation Law Lab were reportedly denied access.
Criticism about the circumstances around the arrests has been vocal. "Imagine being arrested, unable to understand what's happening, and cut off from legal help," Puma Tzoc, director of the Collective of Indigenous Interpreters of Oregon at Pueblo Unido, told the Statesman Journal.
