ICE official defends agency’s tactics amid fallout from bad house raid in Portland, Oregon

In images widely shared on social media last week, federal immigration officers were seen breaking into Gloria Magaña’s house Portland, Oregoneven if the person sought does not live there.

The officers forced their way into the home without showing a warrant, Magaña told CBS News.

The raid took place on October 15. Magaña, originally from Mexico, said she received a call from her children, who told her that officers were shouting for someone named Israel, but that no one in their house had that name. She said she told her children to lock themselves in a room.

Armed with firearms, the agents forced the door to the room. Magaña’s daughter took video of the heavily armed officers telling them to put their hands up as her daughter, a three-month-old baby, cried. One of the officers asked if any of the men in the room were named Israel.

Outside the house, witnesses asked federal agents for information.

“Stop looking at TikTok. We don’t need to identify ourselves to you,” an officer said in a video recorded by a witness.

Even though federal authorities have since admitted they were looking for someone else, agents still arrested Magaña’s 20-year-old son and his partner, saying they were in the United States illegally. Magaña said neither had a criminal record. Federal records reviewed by CBS News also indicate the men do not face any criminal charges or convictions.

ICE’s online detention system indicated Monday that Magaña’s son, Napoléon Magaña, was being held at the agency’s detention center in Tacoma, Washington. His partner, Arturo Garcia Cabrera, was transferred to the Adams County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, the system showed.

A senior Homeland Security official told CBS News that federal agents who entered Magaña’s home on Oct. 15 were searching for an individual with a criminal history who they believed had evaded arrest and fled into the apartment complex. The target of the operation remains at large, the official said.

“Two additional aliens from Mexico were found inside the apartment and taken into ICE custody on scene,” the official said, adding that no federal agents were injured in the incident.

As millions took to the streets this weekend to protest “No Kings,” federal agents in Portland deployed tear gas to disperse a crowd gathered outside ICE facilities, where protests have been taking place for months denouncing the agency’s tactics as brutal and indiscriminate.

In an interview with CBS News in Portland, Marcos Charles, head of ICE’s deportation unit, Enforcement and Removal Operations, denied the accusations.

“They don’t strike indiscriminately,” he told CBS News. “We’re doing our surveillance. If you’re in the country illegally, we’re going to arrest you.”

Charles also downplayed concerns that ICE’s tactics had become too aggressive.

“We use whatever force is necessary to make an arrest,” he said. “If people interpret that as being aggressive, so be it.”

Since President Trump returned to office and launched a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, ICE agents have been given a broad mandate to illegally detain and deport people in the United States, with Biden-era limits on non-criminal arrests being rolled back.

Charles said ICE still primarily targets illegal immigrants in the United States who have also committed crimes. But he said anyone found in the United States illegally by his agents will be arrested, even if they have no criminal record and have been in the country for 40 years.

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that the Trump administration could deploy National Guard troops in Portland to protect ICE facilities there while the legal battle over their deployment plays out.

Some members of the local community are seeking to help those who might be targeted by immigration agents, including Pastor Mark Knutson, who has put up signs stating that ICE agents must obtain permission to enter his church.

“We’re not going to hide people. What we’re going to create is a safe space,” said Knutson, a reverend physician at Augustana Lutheran Church. “And then we work on the systems to help them get their amnesty or get the documents.”

“ICE can’t get in here…It could be a dead end if that happens,” he added.

Knutson said he prays he never has to face that reality.