Video shows ICE violently arresting Oregon farm workers and using facial recognition

Newly released body-camera footage shows US immigration officers stopping a van of farm workers in Oregon, smashing their windows and using facial recognition software to try to identify one of them. Videos from a 30 October 2025 operation were disclosed in court as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest tactics and racial profiling by agents. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian. The officers did not have warrants to detain the workers, and a federal judge later said the arrests appeared to be unlawful and unjustified. The footage shows an agent using his phone to capture the face of one of the detained workers, and agents later admitted in court that they used a facial recognition app during the operation. The case provides a window into ICE’s expanding use of this surveillance technology across the US, which has raised significant privacy and civil liberties concerns, particularly since the app can yield inaccurate results. In the early morning on the day the footage was filmed, a team of ICE agents surveilled an apartment complex in Woodburn, a city south of Portland and home to many agricultural workers. An officer identified in court as JB later testified that the agents had chosen that location in part based on data surfaced from an ICE mobile app called Elite, which was built by the tech firm Palantir. The agent said the app helps officers find areas where they might find “targets” to potentially detain. Agents decided to follow a white van leaving the apartment complex after running license plates and discovering the van’s owner was potentially an immigrant in the US without authorization, JB said. The officer said in court they did not confirm whether the driver of the van was, in fact, the vehicle’s owner, but that he felt it was suspicious the driver was making multiple stops for passengers: “You don’t know if it’s human trafficking or smuggling.” Lawyers with Innovation Law Lab, an immigrant rights’ non-profit that filed the class-action and represented one of the farm workers, said the van was simply carpooling to a job site. The body-cam video starts when officers pull over the van. It was around 5.30am and still dark out. Lawyers shared footage with the occupants’ faces blurred to protect their privacy. ICE agents pull over a van of farm workers and smash the vehicle’s windows “Bust it! Bust it!” one of the officers said, referring to the van’s windows. An officer then shouted commands in Spanish to open the window, but within seconds, shattered the van’s side window before occupants could comply. A 45-year-old woman visible in the footage, identified as MJMA, is a farm worker and lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. The video captured her asserting her rights to remain silent, saying in Spanish, “We don’t have to answer,” and indicating she wanted a lawyer. She also instructed the others in the car not to speak as she called 911. An officer identified in court as CM, whose body camera was recording the encounter, then said to another officer on scene: “She wants to lawyer up. She doesn’t want to identify herself, we’ll just take her.” While MJMA was on the phone with 911 asking to speak to a Spanish-speaking dispatcher, an officer demanded she turn her phone off. 1:22 ICE handcuffs farm worker after she asks for lawyer and asserts right to remain silent – video When the woman didn’t exit the car, CM said, “We gotta get them out. They’re on the phone, making … calls and stuff.” He then grabbed MJMA and took her out of the car as she said in Spanish: “This can’t happen to us! They’re using force. No, no, no!” The officer then broke her phone, she later testified. The seven occupants of the car were then detained – six handcuffed and forced to sit on the pavement lined up against a wall, and an older woman detained on a bench. “What a lovely bunch of people!” one of the officers shouted. Officers handcuff the occupants and force them to sit on the pavement ‘Inaccurate’ facial scans As the farm workers sat along the wall, the video shows one agent pulling out his phone and holding it close to one man’s face, while another officer shone a bright flashlight on the man’s face. The agent held the phone up for about 12 seconds while the phone appeared to be scanning the man’s image. Later in the video, one of the officers was heard saying: “Mobile Fortify couldn’t find him.” Mobile Fortify is the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) facial recognition app, which officers use to scan the faces of individuals, cross-referencing it with various databases to try to identify them. Officer uses a facial recognition app to try to identify a detained worker DR, an agent involved in the Woodburn arrests, was asked about the app in court and acknowledged he didn’t know what databases it used and didn’t know the rate of accuracy, saying: “I’m not certain on the technical aspects.” A female agent on the sce