‘Not going to allow that in our communities’: Hillsboro couple blocks CBP van

HILLSBORO, Ore. (KOIN) – A man and his wife are seen in a now-viral video blocking federal agents with their car in a Hillsboro neighborhood Tuesday. The couple believed they were ICE agents, but ICE confirmed to KOIN 6 the men in the video are Customs and Border Protection Officers.

Karim Delgado said his wife Kiley called him Tuesday afternoon saying agents were in a neighborhood near theirs in Hillsboro. When Delgado got there, he found men in vests and masks who he said first identified themselves as Hillsboro Police. With his wife already blocking the road going one way, Delgado used his car to also block the road with the officers’ van in the middle.

“We felt like the more the community disrupts that and the more the community confronts that, the more difficult that we make it for them to kidnap people, the less likely they are to want to hang out in this area,” Delgado said.

Delgado said the goal was to interrupt.

“Sometimes just taking up their time is the difference between them being able to detain, you know, a working father or mother,” he said.

Sgt. Aaron McCarver with Hillsboro Police said the department was not called to this incident, but from the video it appears it could be coercion. He said coercion is preventing a movement or action of someone who is legally allowed to perform that movement or action. McCarver said HPD does not help ICE perform immigration enforcement, but they also do not prevent them from enforcing federal law. If HPD was called to a scene like this, he said they could take action.

“From our perspective, it doesn’t matter who is in the car, if it was a neighbor and the same situation happened and they were blocked in like that and it was reported to us, we would go investigate as a possible coercion crime,” he said. “So the vehicle occupants, it’s not affected by whether they’re ICE agents or not.”

Across the country, run-ins between civilians and federal agents are making headlines. In Chicago Tuesday teargas was deployed at a standoff involving federal immigration officials and nearby residents. Delgado said he is not concerned with the Trump administration’s view, even if the disruptions give the president more reason to justify sending troops to Oregon.

“I think it’s about time that we recognized the escalation coming from the administration,” he said. “And we meet that as a community, to be able to tell them who we are. And that we’re not going to allow that in our communities.”