A 30-year-old Portland woman recovering from a broken leg took the stand this week to describe being pinned to the ground with an officer's knee close to her neck during a chaotic May Day protest outside the South Portland ICE facility, while prosecutors insist she deliberately tried to pull a police officer's hands off another protester being arrested. Catherine Elizabeth Esperanza, a post-doctoral fellow in mental health, faces a single misdemeanor charge of interfering with a police officer, and her trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court began Monday and is expected to run through Wednesday.
According to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Deputy District Attorney Alexander Garcia told jurors that Esperanza was among the first in a human chain of protesters who tried to pull police away from an arrest during the May 1 demonstration at the ICE building, which drew hundreds of people. Portland Police Officer George Anderson testified that Esperanza and about half a dozen other people tried to “unarrest” the person he was taking into custody, and he described protesters and police officers falling together into what he called a large dog pile as the scene descended into chaos. Anderson also testified that protesters grabbed officers and pulled them into the crowd, the outlet reports.
Esperanza's account, relayed through defense attorney Faith O'Malley, is starkly different. O'Malley said Esperanza was pushed toward the ground by a surge of police and grabbed the person under arrest simply to stay upright, not knowing that individual was already being taken into custody or trying to impede officers in any way, per the same account. The defense also alleges that an officer pinned Esperanza to the ground with a knee close to her neck during the struggle.
A Body Already in Crisis
Esperanza wore a protective medical boot throughout the encounter. Her leg had been broken in February 2026, when federal agents shot her with a crowd-control munition across the street during an earlier demonstration, according to Last Week in Hell. That prior injury left her in what the newsletter describes as a fragile physical state by the time of the May Day protest, a detail the defense has cited to argue against any claim she was capable of, or intent on, aggressively resisting officers.
The newsletter also reports that Officer Anderson had completed specialized Portland Police Bureau training in March 2026 on recognizing and preventing positional asphyxia, less than two months before the May 1 arrest in which he restrained Esperanza. That timing has become a focal point for the defense, which argues it undercuts any claim the department was unaware of the risks tied to pinning a person to the ground.
What Oregon Law Actually Says
Oregon's interfering with a peace officer statute, ORS 162.247, makes the offense a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $6,250 fine, but the law explicitly carves out passive resistance from criminal liability, according to Justia Law. The Oregon Supreme Court sharpened that boundary in its 2017 ruling in State v. McNally, holding that passive resistance encompasses nonviolent noncooperation with an officer's order and that nonviolent physical noncompliance alone cannot support an interference conviction, per the Willamette University College of Law.
Separately, Oregon Revised Statutes § 161.237 bars officers from knowingly applying force that impedes breathing or blood circulation by pressing on a person's neck or throat, except in the rare circumstances where deadly force is legally authorized, according to OregonLaws. Portland Police Bureau Directive 1010.00 goes further, classifying neck restraints as deadly force and requiring officers to immediately remove their body weight if a person expresses distress or difficulty breathing, per Portland.gov. Those standards form the backbone of the defense's argument that whatever happened on the ground crossed a line the department itself has drawn.
A Shift in How Portland Prosecutes Protest Cases
The case also reflects a broader change in how Multnomah County is handling protest arrests. District Attorney Nathan Vasquez took office in January 2025 after campaigning on a platform of stricter prosecution of public order offenses and closer coordination with police, according to OPB. His office has pursued criminal charges in 26 protest arrest cases so far in 2026 and made charging decisions in 46 such cases overall, with charges ranging from criminal trespass and vandalism to interfering with police.
That marks a departure from the approach of former DA Mike Schmidt, who in August 2020 instituted a policy presumptively declining to prosecute low-level protest cases where the primary charge was interfering with a peace officer, a policy that led to the dismissal of hundreds of similar misdemeanor cases at the time, according to Willamette Week. Esperanza's trial arrives against the backdrop of sustained protest activity at the South Portland ICE facility, where the Portland Police Bureau reported at least 79 total arrests tied to demonstrations there between mid-2025 and January 2026, per Portland.gov.
About a dozen of Esperanza's supporters attended the opening day of trial in the Multnomah County courtroom. With testimony continuing, jurors are left to weigh two competing narratives: whether Esperanza intentionally obstructed officers trying to make an arrest, or was swept up in a chaotic police surge while already compromised by an injury from a previous demonstration.
