Oregon Lawyers Challenge ICE Detentions That Outrun Access to Counsel

The central claim from Innovation Law Lab is not only that immigration enforcement intensified. It is that the Trump administration’s deportation campaign has created conditions in which immigrants may have formal rights, but cannot reliably exercise them before detention, transfer, or fast-track deportation changes their practical options.

The documentary opens with the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” then cuts to President ? donald-trump saying his administration launched “the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history.” For the lawyers followed in Oregon, the operative question is what due process means when people are arrested at courthouses, moved quickly through detention systems, allegedly denied access to counsel, or placed in faster deportation tracks after doing what the legal system told them to do.

Isa Peña puts the contradiction bluntly: “You can comply, you can go to court, you can do the process, and still get picked up.” Tess Hellgren describes clients confronting the same shock: “I don’t understand, I’m following all the rules. Why did they detain me?”

Innovation Law Lab, a Portland-based legal aid group providing free representation to immigrants facing arrest and deportation, frames its work around the idea that rights have to be exercised to survive. Stephen Manning, the group’s executive director, says the organization’s mission is to “promote and protect the rights and prosperity of the immigrant and refugee community,” and that “the best way to defend your rights is to use them. If we don’t use them, they vanish.”

The access-to-counsel lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security concentrates the larger fight. Law Lab alleges that immigrants detained inside the Portland ICE facility wanted lawyers, and that free lawyers were outside trying to see them, but the government would not allow contact. Manning describes the requested relief as an effort to “restore due process” and return to “the status quo of the Fifth Amendment.”

That case remains unresolved in the record presented. As of May 17, 2026, the documentary identifies Innovation Law Lab as still awaiting a decision in its lawsuit seeking to guarantee immigrant detainees access to counsel before transfer out of Oregon. The Trump administration, in a motion opposing a preliminary injunction in the Oregon case, said that “as a matter of policy, ICE does not deny access to counsel” and that denials, “if any, are isolated incidents that may occur for legitimate reasons, such as incomplete documentation, ongoing processing, security risks or the detainee’s refusal.”

That is the factual and legal dispute around which the rest of the work turns. Law Lab says due process is being defeated by speed, denial of access, and enforcement discretion. DHS says access is provided as policy, and that any denials are isolated or justified.

Before the crackdown described here, Manning says the immigration system still operated “within the law,” even when lawyers and the government fought over what the law meant. That, to him, was ordinary legal disagreement. What changed was the premise. He says the group had expected the administration to “move unlawfully and use a lot of illegal tactics” to pursue mass deportation, but that the speed and scope of the shift changed the stakes: “Now it’s just about preserving the shreds of democracy within the immigration space that exist, preventing people’s expulsion back into very dangerous places.”

The law lab’s response is practical as much as constitutional. Manning describes a push in Oregon to make lawyers available at no cost to the community, including asylum workshops and legal clinics aimed at getting people’s asylum applications filed so they could move forward with their process. The organization also sends lawyers into communities through a “Justice Bus,” a converted vehicle Manning describes as a mobile access-to-justice tool with a consultation area inside and a canopy that can create a waiting or lobby space outside.

The point is not only to litigate after arrests occur. It is to put applications, lawyers, and legal advice in place before federal enforcement reaches people. That access infrastructure becomes more important as Law Lab’s account shifts from helping people navigate a functioning process to trying to keep people from being detained before any process can be used effectively.

Peña’s work is also personal. She says she comes from a mixed-status family, with immediate family members who have citizenship and others who have no documents. “The personal is always in the work,” she says. At a rally, she calls on Oregon leaders to “ensure that our state stands strong” and says that if ICE wants to find out what the Constitution means in Oregon, “we will not back down.”

The first major escalation is the emergence of courthouse arrests. In May 2025, the documentary identifies ICE as beginning to arrest immigrants at courthouses across the United States. The practice, as described by Isa Peña, involved ICE attorneys asking immigration judges to dismiss people’s cases. Once a judge dismissed the case, Peña says, ICE agents waited outside to arrest the person.

Tess Hellgren explains why dismissal, normally favorable to a defendant or respondent, became dangerous in this context. “Usually it’s a good thing if the government drops charges against you,” she says. Here, she says, the government was dismissing proceedings in order to put people into a form of proceedings with fewer rights and faster deportation.

Stephen Manning says the practice had not yet begun in Oregon when the group first saw it appearing in Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Seattle. But he expected it to arrive. His objection was constitutional rather than procedural alone: “It violates the Constitution because they did it without regard for anybody’s due process rights.” His forecast was bleak: “I think it’s gonna get really, really bad. And I think we’re only at the beginning of bad right now.”

By July 1, 2025, courthouse arrests had begun in Portland, according to the documentary. Innovation Law Lab prepared to represent an asylum seeker identified only by the initials YZLH. Manning says YZLH followed every rule and went to immigration court, where he was then “grabbed.” Manning acknowledges that immigration authorities have power to detain people, but argues that the power still has to be exercised “within the confines of the Constitution.” In YZLH’s case, he says, “The government did not do that at all.”

Hellgren’s legal preparation focused on parole and detention authority. She rehearses asking the court to find that the petitioner’s grant of parole under 8 USC 1182(d)(5) had not expired on its own, and that the purpose of parole was to allow him to seek protection in the United States. The petition sought YZLH’s release on the theory that he had been detained without due process.

The court ordered his release. Hellgren says the judge issued “a very clear, unequivocal order from the bench” that YZLH had been unlawfully detained since June 5 and needed to be released that day. Manning calls the result “justice,” but not because the system worked from the beginning. “He should never have been detained in the first place,” he says. The meaningful point, for him, is that once the alleged wrong occurred, a court recognized the illegality and supplied a remedy.

That result gives Manning hope in the judiciary, but only in a limited sense. The same sequence also demonstrates Law Lab’s practical fear: due process depends on timing, counsel, and a court willing to act while a remedy can still matter.

Stephen Manning reaches for Ernst Fraenkel’s theory of “the dual state” to explain what he believes is happening. Fraenkel, whom Manning identifies as a German lawyer practicing during the rise of the Nazis and one of the few Jewish lawyers still licensed to practice, wrote about two coexisting states of legality: the “normative state” and the “prerogative state.”

In Manning’s description, most people spend most of their lives in the normative state. Mortgage law, contract law, traffic rules, and ordinary legal routines continue to operate. People still stop at stop signs. The formal legal system appears intact.

The prerogative state is different. Manning calls it a “legal abyss,” where the law is displaced by the will of whoever holds power. In the immigration context, he identifies that power with DHS administrators and those directing enforcement. “Whatever they say becomes the law,” he says. “So there is no law.”

Manning compares the shift to Stranger Things: “Any moment in time, you could get ripped from the normal state into the prerogative state.” The analogy is doing specific work. Manning is not saying every institution has stopped functioning. He is saying immigrants can pass from a world where rules and procedures exist into one where enforcement actors behave as though those rules do not bind them, and the transition can happen suddenly: at court, at work, at an ICE facility, or during an attempted consultation with counsel.

His litigation strategy follows from that diagnosis. “Law exists only because we believe it exists,” he says. “So we have to get courts to believe that there’s still law and that they will then enforce law.” In his view, the prior bedrock assumption in the United States was the rule of law: “all the laws apply.” He says that bedrock “doesn’t exist right now.”

The second detailed detention case involves Rigoberto Hernandez, a wildland firefighter whom Law Lab says was detained and arrested while actively fighting the Bear Gulch Fire in Washington. Isa Peña says Innovation Law Lab held a press conference for Hernandez after his detention.

A news segment shown in the documentary describes Customs and Border Protection agents moving in on crews working the Bear Gulch Fire in the Olympic Peninsula, lining them up, and photographing their IDs. Rodrigo Fernández-Ortega, speaking at the press conference, says that on August 27 armed Border Patrol agents, working with National Park Rangers, “illegally arrested Mr. Hernandez.” According to Fernández-Ortega, Hernandez invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and federal agents arrested him despite having “no warrant or reasonable suspicion.”

Fernández-Ortega frames the issue as broader than one arrest: “If CBP can unlawfully detain someone in secret, without notice or access to counsel, then no one’s due process rights are safe.”

Innovation Law Lab filed for Hernandez’s immediate release. Four days later, Peña says the group received notice that ICE attorneys had moved to dismiss his immigration proceedings and that he would be released. She was “kind of shocked that it turned around so quickly.” Hernandez had been in detention for almost a month, according to the documentary.

After his release, Hernandez describes detention as “mainly like a mentality game.” Each day, he says, a detained person decides whether to dwell on the situation or make the best of it. He says he met “pretty good souls” inside and heard their stories. His conclusion is terse: “It’s just what they do to immigrants.”

Peña does not treat wins as routine. The days with victories are “really good,” she says, but other days are heartbreaking. The operating ethic becomes narrow and immediate: if the group can get one person out of detention, “it’s worth it.”

Over the summer, Innovation Law Lab challenged the arrests of six immigrant clients and won five of the six cases, according to the documentary.

For Law Lab, the record shows that courts could still remedy some detentions when lawyers reached clients and filed cases quickly enough. It also gives the group a litigation pattern: repeated individual challenges, repeated claims of unlawful arrest or detention, and repeated attempts to get people released while courts could still act.

By fall, the fight had moved from individual habeas petitions to a broader access-to-counsel lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. Law Lab’s factual allegation is that people detained inside the Portland ICE facility wanted lawyers, and free lawyers were outside trying to see them, but the government would not allow contact.

The political atmosphere around Portland is part of the pressure. A news segment says immigrant advocates reported more than 200 arrests in Oregon over several weeks. Isa Peña says ICE and Border Patrol were “recklessly and violently targeting Oregonians on their way to work.” ? donald-trump describes Portland as “burning to the ground” and refers to “agitators” and “insurrectionists.” Stephen Manning says the “Trump regime wants to punish Oregon” and Portland, while calling the city “war-ravaged.”

Manning says arrests and detentions had become more violent, and that people were being moved “really quickly, faster than the lawyers can operate.” At the ICE facility, he says, “there are people who are detained inside who want lawyers, and there are free lawyers outside, but the government won’t let the people see the lawyers, and won’t let the lawyers see the people. That’s not due process.”

A social media clip shown in the documentary depicts an attorney outside the Portland ICE Detention Center on October 24, 2025, asking to give counsel to clients. The visible text says she “never received access.” Manning identifies the attorney as Kate, a Law Lab lawyer with papers showing she represented people inside. According to Manning’s description, armed personnel told her the facility was closed and did not let her in. A voice in the clip says, “Come back Monday man, we’re closed.”

DHS’s position is different. A DHS spokesperson said that “all detainees are provided ample opportunity to communicate with their attorneys and family members” and are provided “a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys.” The administration’s later motion in the Oregon case likewise says that, “as a matter of policy, ICE does not deny access to counsel,” and that any denials are isolated or justified by reasons such as incomplete documentation, ongoing processing, security risks, or the detainee’s refusal.

Innovation Law Lab sued DHS, alleging detainees were being denied access to counsel in violation of due process. At the first telephonic hearing on October 24, the decision was left pending. Two days after a later no-decision update, the court denied the group’s request for a temporary restraining order and ordered more evidence. Manning says the judge wanted more facts demonstrating denials of access before granting the requested relief.

The timing was damaging from the lawyers’ perspective. Almost simultaneously, Manning says, the group learned that at least 31 people had been “scooped up in a whole series of warrantless arrests.” A social media visual shown in the documentary referred to “31 PEOPLE” detained by federal agents in Woodburn. Law Lab continued filing habeas petitions and seeking releases while preparing for the follow-up hearing.

Peña later says Law Lab attorneys were able to swiftly reach and file habeas petitions for five of those detained. To her, that contrast proved the access point: “This is what due process looks like when attorneys can access their clients.” Her question follows directly: if everyone ICE “snatched” from the community had been able to meet with an attorney, “how many more families would be whole tonight?”

Peña also describes the broader community effect. She says the level of violence and sweeps is something she has not seen “in decades.” People, she says, have become afraid to do ordinary things: they do not go to get gas as regularly, or send friends to get gas for them because they fear being pulled over. The work becomes, in her words, “trying to bandage our way through” and protect as many people as possible.

1. May 2025
   ICE begins arresting immigrants at courthouses across the US, according to the documentary.
2. July 1, 2025
   Courthouse arrests begin in Portland; Law Lab prepares to represent YZLH.
3. August 27, 2025
   Rodrigo Fernández-Ortega says Border Patrol and National Park Rangers illegally arrested Rigoberto Hernandez at the Bear Gulch Fire.
4. October 24, 2025
   Law Lab’s access-to-counsel case receives a telephonic hearing after allegations that lawyers were unable to reach detainees at the Portland ICE facility.
5. Late October 2025
   The court denies Law Lab’s request for a temporary restraining order and orders more evidence.
6. December 18, 2025
   The access-to-counsel case proceeds to a remote evidentiary hearing.
7. May 17, 2026
   Law Lab is still awaiting a decision on its request to guarantee access to counsel before detainees are transferred out of Oregon.

At the December 18, 2025 remote evidentiary hearing in the access-to-counsel case, Stephen Manning says Innovation Law Lab brought “a lot of evidence”: testimony from lawyers, community members, impacted individuals, data, and other materials. What most struck him was the government’s closing argument.

Manning says the government lawyer’s closing had two parts. First, he says, it praised DHS officers as people “out there every day risking their lives to deport people.” A hearing-transcript graphic attributed to Innovation Law Lab quotes the government lawyer as saying: “I cannot emphasize enough the public service of DHS officers. I think they are heroes. [...] Everyone should thank them for their public service.”

Second, Manning says, the government argued that the lawsuit could “leverage the machinery of the judiciary” to interfere with immigration enforcement. A transcript graphic states that “this lawsuit could be used to leverage the machinery of the judiciary to interfere with [...] the enforcement of immigration law.”

Manning’s response is that this is precisely what constitutional adjudication is for. “That’s called the Fifth Amendment,” he says. “That is the machinery of the judiciary.” He interprets the argument as a claim that the men enforcing immigration law “are above the law.”

At the end of the December hearing, Judge Aiken took the matter under advisement. Manning did not know whether a decision would arrive before the new year. By February 2026, Innovation Law Lab was still waiting for a ruling on its request for a preliminary injunction. Manning says he checked multiple times a day. The continued absence of a decision, in his view, affected everyone entering the building: “There’s a level of fear that you, I mean, you look at the building, it’s like you step in and you might not step out.”

The unresolved posture matters because the requested injunction is aimed at the interval before transfer. Law Lab’s claim is that the right to counsel must be meaningful at the moment someone is detained. DHS’s position is that its policy already provides access, and that any failures are isolated or explained by operational reasons.

Innovation Law Lab also goes to Oregon’s State Capitol in February 2026 to advocate for increased funding for immigration lawyers. Rigoberto Hernandez agrees to testify. His role changes from client to witness: someone whose release depended on legal representation, now arguing that others need access to the same kind of help.

Hernandez tells lawmakers he was fighting a wildland fire in the Olympic Peninsula when Border Patrol arrested him. “I am an Oregonian,” he says, “and I am grateful that this program existed so that my attorneys could fight my unlawful detention.” He adds that he is “just one of many Oregonians who have been targeted by unlawful arrests,” and that people need access to an attorney at “some of the most critical moments” in their lives.

The funding argument is tied to the mechanics of detention and transfer. If attorneys cannot reach people quickly, individual rights may be impossible to enforce in time. If lawyers can reach them, Peña says, habeas petitions can be filed and people can sometimes be released.

Stephen Manning says the work has “slowed the mass deportation regime” and “broken some of the cogs that are necessary to run that machine.” He points to decisions across the country holding that people are not subject to mandatory detention and that, in those cases, “the government is just interpreting the law wrong.” Approximately 300 lawsuits have been filed nationwide challenging aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, according to the documentary.

Manning’s hope is carefully bounded. He says he is hopeful about cases Law Lab has brought, about the resilience of the people represented, and about the stamina and courage of Law Lab staff. He is not saying the system is healthy. He is saying there are still courts, lawyers, clients willing to testify, and remedies that sometimes work.