A married couple in Hillsboro, Oregon, who were filming Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in a supermarket parking lot were chased by three unmarked ICE vehicles, boxed in at a traffic light, and had a rear tire stabbed twice by a masked agent — who then drove away without saying a word to them. That is the account set out in an administrative complaint the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Oregon filed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on October 29, 2026, over an incident the complaint dates to the morning of October 7, 2026, in Hillsboro, a suburb west of Portland. The ACLU released video of the tire-slashing along with the complaint.

Source: ACLU press release, Oct 29, 2026

According to the complaint, the couple — identified only by the initials A.P. and M.P. — spotted an ICE SUV while driving in Hillsboro on October 7 and followed it to a supermarket parking lot where two other ICE vehicles were present. The couple lowered their windows and shouted “This is ICE! This is ICE!”, blew whistles and honked their horn, the complaint says. An agent picked up a shopping cart and approached their car, and the couple say they heard an agent say something to the effect of “Let’s block them in with the cart.” As the couple drove away, several agents chased them on foot, the complaint alleges.

The chase and the tire-slashing, as the complaint tells it

The complaint says all three ICE vehicles then chased the couple, “driving aggressively and nearly colliding into” their car, swerving in front of it and trying to box it in — all, at first, without flashing lights or sirens. The couple cut through an empty parking lot and drove down several more streets. When the ICE vehicles finally switched on lights and sirens, the couple kept driving for roughly a minute because, they say, they were afraid to stop on an empty road with no bystanders around.

When the couple stopped at a traffic light, video shows a masked agent wearing an “ICE POLICE” vest get out, walk to their car and stab a rear tire with a knife, then return to his vehicle without attempting to speak to them. The couple’s car rolled slowly forward into a turn lane and stopped again — and the same agent got out and stabbed the tire a second time. “All three ICE vehicles turned off their flashing lights and sirens and drove off,” the complaint states. The couple were never arrested, charged or spoken to by the agents, according to the ACLU.

“What happened to us is not unique, and that is what is so terrifying,” A.P. and M.P. said in a statement released by the ACLU. “We observe and record public ICE activity in order to shine a light on their abusive behavior and to create a record of what our government is up to. Because of that, they are terrorizing us and anyone else who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to hold our government accountable.”

What the complaint demands

The complaint — filed with the DHS Office of Inspector General and other DHS oversight offices, according to Reason’s reporting — demands that DHS identify, investigate and discipline the agents involved, preserve all evidence from the incident, and open a comprehensive investigation into what the ACLU calls a nationwide pattern of ICE agents retaliating against people who observe and record enforcement activity. It is an administrative complaint, not a lawsuit, so it carries no court deadline; the next step rests with DHS oversight offices.

A wider fight over the right to record

The filing lands in a running national legal fight. Every federal appeals court that has decided the question — nine so far, as Reason notes — has upheld the public’s right to record law enforcement officers in public, and the ACLU says it has brought similar observer cases over the past 18 months in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, plus a class-action case in Memphis, Tennessee, where residents allege a federal task force surveilled, pulled over and arrested people for filming. The Oregon complaint also points to an October 2025 Portland-area incident in which, the ACLU says, agents broke the car windows of a U.S. citizen who had been filming them, dragged her out and detained her for roughly seven hours before releasing her without charges.

“The right to record publicly visible law enforcement activity is fundamental to our democracy,” said Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Kelly Simon, legal director of the ACLU of Oregon, added: “Masked federal officers have no business coming to Oregon to injure or intimidate people… Oregonians should not have to fear retaliation when they exercise their right to record law enforcement.”

Why it matters in Oregon — and for diaspora readers

The incident came during what the ACLU describes as a surge of ICE activity across Oregon in October 2026, coinciding with a DHS social-media post promising to target so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions such as Oregon. Hillsboro sits in Portland’s western suburbs, in the state’s technology corridor, home to a large immigrant workforce including many Punjabi and other South Asian families. Community “observer” networks — residents who film enforcement actions and alert neighbours — have become a fixture of that landscape, and this case will test what protection those observers actually have. For any reader: the events above are allegations in a complaint, not findings; but the practical lesson from both sides of the case is that filming officers in public is a right U.S. appeals courts have repeatedly upheld, while DHS says this specific encounter is now under internal investigation.