Portland man shot by Border Patrol pleads not guilty to assaulting agent

A man shot and wounded by a Border Patrol agent during an immigration stop in Portland last week has plead not guilty to charges of aggravated assault against a federal officer and damaging federal property.

Luis David Nino-Moncada, who was taken into custody after sustaining an injury in the arm from the shooting, was indicted on Tuesday and entered his plea on Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security alleges that Nino-Moncada, who is of Venezuelan descent, entered the US illegally and used his vehicle as a weapon when agents attempted to apprehend him.

Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, a woman from Venezuela who was allegedly sitting in the passenger seat of Nino-Moncada’s pickup truck and who was also shot, was taken to an ICE detention facility after she was released from the hospital.

The shooting, which happened the day after a federal officer shot and killed Renee Good in Minnesota while bystanders filmed, sparked outrage from local officials in Oregon who called for more transparency.

Federal investigators say there is no surveillance or video footage of the Portland shooting or the events that the Trump administration officials claim led up to it.

Border agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire after Nino-Moncada put the truck in reverse and repeatedly slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. Photos of the rented car provided by the justice department show a battered black vehicle with no obvious official markings. According to the affidavit, an officer fired two shots as Nino-Moncada fled the scene.

The DHS also accused Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras of being affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Portland police chief Bob Day said last week that Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras had “some nexus” to the gang and were brought to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but that they were not identified as suspects.

In the days after the shootings, large protests have erupted across the country against the violent tactics of federal immigration officers and their continued presence in communities, especially in Minneapolis, where Good was shot.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has doubled down, deploying what it called “its largest operation in DHS history” to the Minneapolis area. Officers have used aggressive crowd control tactics against demonstrators, including the use of teargas, pepper balls and stun grenades, and administration officials have repeatedly defended agents, saying they are working under the protection of federal immunity.

Legal experts have questioned the sweeping claim, but that has not stopped the threats made by the administration to anyone – including those holding public office – who might try to impede their operations.

“[The] Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States, or against ICE officers they will face justice,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, said on Fox News on Tuesday, after repeating the administration’s claim that ICE officers have federal immunity.

The DHS has also asserted that immigration enforcement agents are facing rising levels of violence from activists and agitators, and framed officers’ actions as self-defense.

In a press release about the Nino-Moncada shooting, the DHS claimed its officers are facing “1,300% increase in assaults against them, a 3,200% increase in vehicular attacks against them, and an 8,000% increase in death threats against them”. The agency did not provide evidence to support that claim or similar claims it has made in the past.

But thousands of pages of court records, reviewed in an investigation from the Los Angeles Times, showed agents left most alleged attacks uninjured. US immigration officers also made false and misleading statements about protesters accused of violence and arrested in Los Angeles last year, according to law enforcement files reviewed by the Guardian in July.

The Associated Press contributed reporting