The Portland resident’s cell phone buzzed at 9:07 on a Wednesday morning last month. A text message.
The incoming number wasn’t saved in the man’s contacts, but it was local and the sender definitely knew who he was.
“Hello,” the message read, addressing the man by his first name. “This is Officer Smith. My address is as follows: 4310 SW Macadam Ave. Portland, OR 97239. Please feel free to call me with any questions that you have. I will need to heard [sic] from you soon.”
“Officer Smith” is Scott P. Smith, an agent with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The address on Macadam is the local ICE headquarters in Southwest Portland. The man he texted, who the Mercury has agreed not to name, is suspected by ICE to be living in the United states illegally and was recently charged with a misdemeanor in Multnomah County.
Smith soon got the man on the phone, attorneys say, and manipulated him into divulging his native country and immigration status. The agent was collecting evidence against him for a potential deportation proceeding.
It’s common, obviously, for ICE to go after undocumented immigrants. Stories of the agency’s heightened, sometimes cruel efforts to round up deportees have made national news on a near-daily basis since Donald Trump was sworn in as president in January—including a number of high-profile local incidents.
What’s unusual, in the Portland area at least, is ICE agents sending text messages to their targets in order to trick them into turning themselves in.