WOODBURN, OREGON — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped a van of farm workers in Woodburn, Oregon, around 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2025, and detained seven occupants without warrants. A federal judge later said the arrests appeared to be unlawful and unjustified.

Body-camera footage from the operation was disclosed in court as part of a class-action lawsuit challenging ICE's arrest tactics and racial profiling. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian.

Earlier that morning, agents surveilled an apartment complex in Woodburn and followed a white van leaving the complex after running its license plates and discovering the van's owner was potentially an unauthorized immigrant. Officers pulled the van over while it was still dark.

"You don't know if it's human trafficking or smuggling," ICE agent JB said. JB also said in court that his team was given a verbal order to target eight arrests per day. He said in court that the ICE mobile app Elite, built by Palantir, "helps officers find areas where they might find 'targets' to potentially detain." One officer shouted "Bust it! Bust it!" referring to the van's windows, and an officer shattered the van's side window seconds after ordering the occupants to open it.

MJMA, a 45-year-old farm worker and lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in Spanish, "We don't have to answer." She indicated she wanted a lawyer and called 911. While she was on the phone asking to speak to a Spanish-speaking dispatcher, an officer demanded she turn her phone off, and she was removed from the vehicle.

"This can't happen to us! They're using force. No, no, no!" MJMA said. According to her court testimony, an officer broke her phone.

Six of the detainees were handcuffed and forced to sit on the pavement lined up against a wall, while an older woman was detained on a bench. One officer shouted, "What a lovely bunch of people!"

The video shows an agent holding a phone close to a man's face for about 12 seconds while another officer shone a flashlight during a facial scan. "Mobile Fortify couldn't find him," an officer said. Mobile Fortify is the Department of Homeland Security's facial recognition app used to scan individuals' faces and cross-reference them with databases, which can yield inaccurate results.

Four of the people detained from the van were later deported, according to a DHS spokesperson.

U.S. Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled against ICE in February, found officers engaged in misconduct in Oregon, and issued a preliminary decision restricting agents from arresting people without warrants. Kasubhai noted officers made inaccurate statements in their reports about the Woodburn encounter, including falsely saying MJMA had entered the U.S. unlawfully despite arriving with a valid temporary visa. The judge said the claims of possible smuggling were unfounded and that ICE's reports inaccurately called the stop "consensual."