Judge wants Venezuelan man ‘swept up’ by ICE during FBI raid to testify in person

A Venezuelan man describes, in a new court filing, how he was swept up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an Oct. 15 FBI raid at Woodland Creek apartments in Eugene.

The man, 46, is being held in an ICE detention center rather than on criminal charges. On the day of the raid, an attorney with Catholic Community Services of Lane County filed a motion in federal court seeking his release, saying the man has a pending asylum application and was “swept up along with others.”

In a six-page declaration filed in court Thursday, Oct. 30, the man described the raid as “super-fast” and “disorienting,” stating that he had been visiting a friend and fell asleep on a couch after a night spent watching a movie and playing video games.

He disputes an assertion made by an ICE agent in a separate court document that he lived in the apartment where agents executed the search warrant.

The man’s place of residence may be crucial to his case, as the ICE agent’s statement said that failing to report a change in address led to the man’s detention. The ICE agent also asserted that the man admitted to living in the unit where the raid took place.

But the latest filing also includes a statement by a neighbor backing up the Venezuelan man’s claim, in which he states he has been living with family in a different apartment at the same complex and that the address has previously been on file with ICE.

The man states that the unit he shared with family “is the address on my ID and on my asylum application. I do not pay rent anywhere else, and I do not have a key to any other residence.”

The asylum application process is for those seeking protection in the U.S. because they fear persecution in their home countries, and court documents state the man has a hearing set for March 2027. He has been described in previously filed court documents as having “long opposed the authoritarian government” in Venezuela.

In response to a motion for a hearing about “clearly unresolved factual questions,” Senior U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken on Thursday set an evidentiary hearing for Nov. 14 and ordered ICE to bring the man to appear “in person so that he may offer testimony,” according to online court records.

A document filed in court on Monday, Oct. 20, said he remained in ICE detention at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington. The man is only identified by his initials in the court records.

In previously filed court documents, the ICE officer has described the early morning raid, which involved a heavy law enforcement presence, as seeking “to locate firearms being unlawfully possessed by an alien at such location.” The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office have declined to answer questions from Lookout Eugene-Springfield about any criminal arrests or charges filed in connection with the raid.

“We cannot confirm or deny the existence of investigations,” a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement Tuesday, and the FBI has declined to comment except to confirm “court authorized law enforcement activity” took place on Oct. 15.

The Venezuelan man now in ICE custody described the raid as he saw it from the inside of the apartment, after falling asleep at about 1 a.m.

“Then at about 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, I heard sirens and a voice yelling in Spanish, we are the FBI, we have an order for weapons, get out of the apartment with your arms up,” the man said in the statement, which he gave through a translator.

The agents shattered a window, and he heard “two big bangs in the house.” He also saw “red lights from the gun sights” on himself and walls of the apartment.

He went outside in his boxer shorts with his hands up, and the agents then placed him in handcuffs.

“They asked me if there were other people, and I said three friends were inside. They brought out the other guys and handcuffed them. It was all super-fast. It all happened in maybe three minutes,” the man said, going on to describe “officers with guns everywhere” and seeing a drone fly into the apartment.

“It was disorienting, and I was scared,” the man said.

An FBI officer “asked us about guns,” the man said. “I didn’t know anything about that, so I said I didn’t know. We were put in a van, and the officers went into the apartment and searched it for what seemed like about an hour.”

He continued: “The FBI put me in plastic hand cuffs. Then ICE came, and they switched the plastic cuffs for metal ones. ICE also asked us about guns, and I told them I didn’t know anything about that. ICE also searched around the apartment, for what seemed like about a half hour.”

After being taken to the Eugene ICE office, “[t]hey asked me if I lived at the apartment where I had been detained, and I said no,” the man stated. “The ICE officer said I had broken my agreement. They told me to sign for my transfer to Tacoma, and I said ‘no.’ I said I wanted to talk to an attorney. Instead, the officer signed the paper for me. The officers did not speak much Spanish and didn’t use an interpreter.”