As Juanita Avila stands on the side of Pennoyer Avenue in Cottage Grove, between a hotel and church, she racks her brain for details on the encounter she had weeks before, in the same spot.
At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 5, Avila received a call from a community member about someone being detained by ICE. Their car had been left behind, and the person asked if Avila would help locate it.
This was not entirely unusual, Avila said. She’s well known locally as the owner of Juanita’s Latina Store in downtown Cottage Grove. As an immigrant from Guatemala who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, Avila has often assisted new immigrants in the community and has served as a translator to facilitate interactions with local law enforcement.
So, Avila woke up her daughter, Emely Agustin, and the two drove separately, in order to cover more ground.
Suddenly, as Avila drove up Highway 99, red and blue lights flashed behind her.
“I thought, ‘Okay, it's the police. It's gonna pull me over.’ So the first street I saw, I pulled here, and I rolled my window down,” she said. “I was just thinking I'm gonna get a citation.”
But this was not a routine traffic stop.
“I see this man coming wearing green. He said, ‘We are police.’ And I said, ‘No, you're not police, because I know the police’,” Avila recalled. “Then this other masked guy comes and says, ‘Where were you born?’”
Avila was confused. What did her place of birth have to do with getting pulled over? When she asked the men that same question, they replied with, “Well, we’re officials and you’re under arrest,” Avila remembered.
Now, Avila was confused and scared. She thought the men might be kidnappers. She grabbed her phone to record the incident while the men tried to open her doors.
Eventually, the man at Avila’s window reached his hand into the car and unlocked her door.
They grabbed her phone and stopped the recording. Then, Avila said she felt hands on her, and everything became a blur.
The men dragged Avila out of her car, and handcuffed her while she lay face down.
“I don't even remember how they threw me on the ground. It was just so upsetting,” Avila said. But the next thing she knew, with their knees on her back, the men identified themselves as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“We're arresting you because you're illegal,” Avila remembered them saying. “I said, ‘You’re assuming. Why are you assuming that I'm illegal?’ They didn't even ask for anything.”
Avila, in fact, is not “illegal.” She had her Green Card on her person throughout the encounter, and her valid Real ID in her wallet. Getting a Real ID requires proof of legal residency in Oregon.
But in the chaos of the moment, she hadn’t thought about her papers. And it was becoming clear to her that documentation was not a priority for these agents.
“I think they were just trying to take me, because they acted so quick, like, I take you now, ask questions later,” Avila said. “I was sad, all panicked, because why would they just come like that without verifying anything first?”
ICE has not responded to KLCC’s multiple requests for comment about the incident.
Residency status doesn't always matter
Avila was one of many cases of legal U.S. residents being detained by ICE, including people with Green Cards, visas and other forms of legal status.
A recent investigation also found that over 170 U.S. citizens have also been detained by ICE this year. In many of these cases, agents did not ask for documentation or dismissed proof of citizenship as fake.
That’s why many citizens and residents believe ICE agents are not as preoccupied with documentation as they are with other identifying markers.
Those markers were identified by the Supreme Court’s September decision to temporarily allow federal immigration agents to stop and question individuals based on factors like appearance, language, location, and work.
Critics of the decision, including three justices who dissented, claimed this would allow and even encourage race-based attacks and arrests.
That’s why many of those unlawfully detained by ICE believe they were racially profiled. Avila certainly does.
“It's just because of the color of our skin, and because we’ve come here,” she said about the reason ICE agents have detained people like herself.
The reason the agents were even driving on Highway 99, she suspected, was because the road is often used by carpool vans of migrant workers driving to the fields and mountains in the mornings. That’s also why Avila thinks the agents pulled her over.
“They thought I had more people in there because they ran to open my doors,” she said.
Benjamin Wang, an immigration lawyer in Eugene, said the context of vans taking migrant workers up the road may contribute to ICE agents’ suspicion of illegal immigrants in the area. But it isn’t enough proof on its own.
“There has to be some facts that trigger that suspicion,” Wang said. “They can't (pursue someone) based on that hunch. ‘Look at that van. Maybe there's some people in the van who are not authorized to be in the United States, or are undocumented.’ They cannot do that.”
The parts of Avila’s story that stood out to Wang were the way agents identified themselves initially and the fact that they didn’t ask Avila any questions other than where she was born.
“I have gone through more than 20 some years in immigration law practice,” Wang said, “and this is really something I've never seen.”
While there are no laws requiring agents to identify themselves as ICE, or prohibiting them from calling themselves police, Wang said the choice to do so was purposefully misleading.
He was also troubled by the lack of documentation verification, or general questioning expected during an ICE detainment.
“Officers didn't ask any questions before they got her out of the car and tried to arrest her. When they arrested her, they also didn't ask her questions, didn't check to see if she was a citizen or a (permanent) resident,” he said. "That's the part that was a little shocking to me.”
'Oh my God! That’s my mom!'
It was also shocking to Avila.
Now in handcuffs, she was unable to reach the paper in her pocket that could have prevented the escalation. Initially, she was confused and scared. Now, she was angry.
“I kept yelling at them, ‘You're not police officers, you're not police officers.’ And I kept yelling, ‘I have my son at home, and I'm sick. Please don’t do this,’” Avila remembered.
Avila has fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder that causes aches and pains throughout the body. The adrenaline had kept Avila from feeling any pain during the initial encounter, but she can still feel the effects of the assault weeks later.
She said she thought about her kids, her daughter, Agustin, and 12-year-old son throughout the experience. Who would take care of them if she was taken away?
At the same time, Agustin was driving in the area, still looking for the abandoned car. She noticed the vehicles with their lights on, and about 10 agents standing over someone in the street. She started recording the commotion.
That’s when something caught her eye: a bright red jacket, just like the one her mother was wearing when they left the house that morning.
In the video, Agustin lets out a gasp and says, “Oh my God! That’s my mom!”
“My heart just dropped,” said Agustin. “I knew that there was no reason for her to be detained, to be put in handcuffs, to be put on the floor.”
Agustin quickly parked her car and ran toward the officers yelling, “Hey, what are you doing? She has her Green Card!”
The agents told Agustin to back up and shined flashlights in her face when they realized she was recording. While Agustin yelled her mother’s legal status, agents threatened to arrest her for obstruction.
Agustin said they kept telling her and her mother to calm down, sometimes in English, sometimes in bad Spanish.
“How did they expect me to stay calm?” Agustin said. “Anyone who saw their mother, who knew that they didn't do anything wrong and they're being attacked. How can you expect anyone to stay calm in that moment?”
Then, they threw Avila in one of their vehicles while they talked to her daughter.
They told Agustin that her mother’s Real ID wasn’t enough proof, and told her to search her mother’s car and wallet.
When she couldn’t find the Green Card, Agustin was allowed to speak to her mother while agents checked Avila’s name in their system. “While you're at it, can you get her to calm down too?” agents had asked Agustin.
Avila was having trouble breathing in the car, suffering from a panic attack and shock. She had lifted herself off the floor and found a gap in the door, pushed her face up to it to get air, while agents watched, expressionless.
In an effort to calm her down, Agustin reminded her mother that her son was waiting at home.
“While I was still talking to her, the female officer went off to talk to someone else,” Agustin remembered. “Then she came back and she and she told me, ‘Oh, we can finally release her. It's fine.’”
The agents had found Avila in their system – no illegal border crossing warning, no criminal record. A legal resident in the process of getting her citizenship.
As they took her handcuffs off, Avila begged them to answer why they had detained her without checking her legal status.
Agustin took a video as one of the agents responded, “Because they lie all the time.”
A community responds
Almost as quickly as it had begun, the interaction was over. The handcuffs came off. The agents drove away. Avila and Agustin hugged on the side of the road, in shock.
Avila went to the hospital afterwards, thinking she had dislocated her shoulder when the agents dragged her out of her car. She told the doctors that there had been an assault, so they sent her to the police to file a report.
The police told her they could document the report, but not much else could be done.
In Cottage Grove, reactions to Avila’s story have been mixed. Some have commented on social media that ICE agents should have taken both Avila and Agustin away. But many others have reached out with heartfelt messages, Avila said.
On Pennoyer Avenue, a woman drives by and rolls down her window.
“Are you Juanita?” she asks.
“Yes,” Avila responds, hesitantly.
The woman had seen Avila’s story on Facebook.
“My heart’s with you guys. I think this is horrible, what's happening in our country, it's just horrible,” she says, peeking her head out of her window. “It brings tears to my eyes. I don't know what we can do about it, but we just gotta help you guys.”
These kinds of interactions have been happening a lot for Avila and her family. Members of the community have shared words of support and gifts since the incident occurred.
Avila was not the only one to be pulled over on Nov. 5, either. Immigrant advocates estimated that at least 11 people were detained in Lane County that day. A candlelight vigil was held in Cottage Grove that evening for the immigrants detained and taken away in the morning.
Wang–the immigration attorney–said cases like Avila’s can bring to light the nature of ICE interactions. Some may assume ICE only detains illegal immigrants or criminals.
But, Wang said, “We're really talking about people who are members of our community, and they have been here for a long time. They have established businesses, families. They make contributions to our society, but now we're trying to deport them without even thinking about what will happen to their family members, their children who need their support.”
Avila and Agustin don’t want to think about how the situation could have gone worse, if Agustin had never shown up, or if officers had moved quicker to take Avila away or never found her name in their system.
They’re glad to be together, as safe as they can be for now. But the impact of the encounter will stay with them for a long time.
