Hillsboro, Oregon: ACLU Asks DHS to Investigate After Video Shows an ICE Agent Slashing Observers' Tire

The American Civil Liberties Union asked the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, Oct. 29, to investigate its own immigration agents after video recorded by two legal observers in Hillsboro, Oregon, showed a masked agent stabbing the couple's car tire with a knife at a traffic light, twice, and then driving away without saying a word to them.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Oregon filed an administrative complaint with the department on behalf of the couple, a married pair identified in the filing only as A.P. and M.P., and released the video on Thursday. One of the two is a United States citizen, according to the complaint. USA Today said it had asked the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment, and neither agency had responded publicly in the reporting published on Thursday.

What the complaint says happened

On the morning of Oct. 7, the couple was driving in Hillsboro, a suburb of Portland, after observing and filming ICE agents in a public parking lot, when they spotted an ICE sport utility vehicle, according to the complaint. The ACLU says agents tailed the couple and boxed in their car with vehicles. When the couple stopped at a traffic light, a masked agent got out, walked up to their car and stabbed one of its rear tires with a knife several times, then returned to his vehicle without speaking to them. The couple rolled slowly forward into a turn lane and stopped again. The same agent got out a second time and stabbed the tire again. All three ICE vehicles then turned off their flashing lights and sirens and drove off, the complaint says.

"What happened to us is not unique, and that is what is so terrifying," A.P. and M.P. said in a statement shared by the ACLU. "We observe and record public ICE activity in order to shine a light on their abusive behavior and to create a record of what our government is up to. Because of that, they are terrorizing us and anyone else who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to hold our government accountable."

What the ACLU is asking for

The complaint, sent to the DHS Office of Inspector General and two other department oversight offices, asks the department to identify the agents involved, investigate the encounter, preserve all evidence and discipline the officers. The ACLU calls the slashing retaliation for filming agents in public, an activity it says the Constitution protects, along with following officers and alerting a neighborhood to their presence.

"Masked federal officers have no business coming to Oregon to injure or intimidate people," said Kelly Simon, legal director of the ACLU of Oregon.

A wider fight over legal observers

The Hillsboro encounter took place during a surge of immigration enforcement activity across Oregon in early October, the ACLU said. Over the past 18 months, the ACLU and its affiliates have brought cases in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis on behalf of observers who say they were surveilled and harassed for filming federal agents in public. In May, the ACLU of Tennessee filed a class action lawsuit against a federal law enforcement task force in Memphis, where residents say observers were arrested, watched at their homes and jailed for trying to film the task force.

The complaint names no agents, and the couple's names were not shared. What happens next sits with the department's own watchdogs, who have been asked to open an investigation into an encounter that the couple's camera recorded in full.