After one of the biggest immigration raids in recent memory in Oregon swept up more than 30 Woodburn-area farmworkers earlier this fall, five of those workers have been released and their detentions declared unlawful.

The massive enforcement action by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 30 shook the majority-Latino community of Woodburn.

Immigration attorneys were only able to reach five of the more than 30 people arrested in that raid. Last week, a federal judge ordered the last of those five workers released.

At federal court in Eugene on Dec. 8, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ordered a 22-year-old woman originally from Guatemala to be released from ICE custody immediately following the hearing. That was only after the judge ordered federal agents to feed the woman because she had not eaten in nearly eight hours.

Aiken ruled the woman, who is only identified in court documents as MLGG, could not be held in immigration custody as her removal order from 2017, when she was 14-years-old, was long past expired. The removal order was only meant to last 90 days.

“She is entitled to release because she is being detained after the expiration of the ninety-day removal period,” Aiken wrote in a Dec. 10 opinion.

ICE agents stopped a van in October carrying MLGG and several others on their way to work at a holly farm. During that raid, the federal government argued, MLGG admitted to officers that “she had no immigration status to remain in the United States.”

The woman denied making such an admission, stating she only told the officers her name, where she lives and that she spoke the Mayan language of Mam.

MLGG’s case followed earlier releases of other people detained in the raid. On Dec. 5, Aiken ordered the release of another Guatemalan woman taken by ICE — identified as RSG.

Also on Dec. 5, Aiken ordered the release and removal of ankle monitors for two others arrested during the Woodburn raid, saying that the monitors acted as a de facto form of detention, even though ICE did not have authority to hold them in custody.

Another woman detained during the Oct. 30 enforcement action in Woodburn, MJMA, was released in November after attorneys at Innovation Law Lab filed a writ of habeas corpus to compel her release.

For Stephen Manning, a lawyer at Innovation Law Lab, which represents the five released farmworkers, these cases represent “a sample” of the dozens of others arrested in the Oct. 30 raid.

To Manning, this signaled that the others arrested that day also might be in detention unlawfully.

When Manning spoke at a press conference the week after the raid, he said ICE denied the attorneys access to nearly everyone who was arrested.

“We know that’s not the way the legal process is supposed to work and we know that ICE is engaged in this denial of access because due process matters,” he said.

Innovation Law Lab, CLEAR Clinic and Pineros y Campesinos del Noroeste, the state’s farmworkers union, are currently suing the federal government over this denial of access to legal counsel for people in ICE custody.

In Washington, D.C., Oregon lawmakers expressed concern Tuesday about the lack of access to legal representation.

All of the Democrats in Oregon’s congressional delegation wrote a letter to federal officials, raising concerns that ICE is targeting non-violent people and denying them swift access to legal counsel after arrest.

“ICE has been increasingly using dragnet practices to detain groups of people with little attention to citizenship or criminal history,” the lawmakers wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. “A recent review of immigration detentions in Oregon from January through October 2025 shows that less than 10 percent of those arrested had been convicted of a violent crime.”

Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley as well as Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Dexter, Val Hoyle, Janelle Bynum and Andrea Salinas signed the letter.

They noted that detainees are frequently moved quickly after an arrest, which the lawmakers said “effectively denies timely access to legal counsel” and is a “moral stain.”

The Democrats said that because of those issues, they continued to oppose any efforts to open a new detention center in Oregon. Job postings from government contractors in recent weeks indicated a desire to build detention centers in either Newport or Portland. Both of those efforts saw significant opposition from local leaders and residents.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/16/farmworkers-released-ice-immigration-oregon-woodburn/