Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have confirmed that two men were arrested on Oregon’s North Coast on June 7 in an operation that triggered additional concerns about a possible violation of Oregon’s sanctuary law and resulted in one Astoria woman being pepper-sprayed.
In a June 11 email an ICE spokesperson called concerns about the operation “legally illiterate,” saying that ICE has authority to make lawful arrests.
“Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the spokesperson said.
According to ICE, the target of the operation on June 7 was 53-year-old Marco Antonio Mendoza-Cesar, from Venezuela. According to ICE, he entered the United States illegally in 2022 and an immigration judge issued a removal order for him last April.
ICE officers also arrested Seaside resident Gerardo Sanchez Lopez, who came to the United States as a teenager. He has lived in this country for nearly 30 years and runs multiple businesses in Clatsop County.
He is now being held in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. According to ICE, he faces removal proceedings.
“He’s a good guy, hardworking, always helping people,” said Cinthia, a close friend and coworker of Sanchez Lopez. She spoke to KMUN on the condition that only her first name be used.
She said Sanchez Lopez has an adult son who lives with him and struggles with mental health issues. The son is currently at the Clatsop County Jail but is due to be released soon. Cinthia isn’t sure where he’ll go now.
Sanchez Lopez’s arrest also means she is left juggling the businesses they run together.
According to Cinthia, Sanchez Lopez was driving from Seaside to Astoria when he realized he was being followed. Vehicles driven by ICE officers surrounded his car, boxing him in near the El Tapatio restaurant in Astoria’s Uniontown neighborhood.
Sanchez Lopez later told Cinthia it seemed the ICE officers were looking for someone else, but still decided to arrest him. They left his truck in a nearby parking lot.
“It could happen to anybody,” Cinthia said. “Really I never thought it would happen to him and it could happen to anybody.”
She is coordinating with attorneys now on his case.
Over the years, Cinthia said she had encouraged Sanchez Lopez to secure immigration papers. She believed he had a strong case. But he never did. She said he was always working
Conflicting claims and information
On June 7, ICE officers appeared to transfer the two men they had arrested between vehicles parked behind fenced off property at the port’s Pier 1.
As ICE vehicles left the area, the ICE spokesperson claimed they were “swarmed by a group of 20 rioters and 4-5 vehicles.”
“When officers attempted to leave, rioters blocked their exit, and one rioter attempted to enter an ICE officer’s vehicle,” the spokesperson wrote, explaining how one Astoria woman came to be pepper-sprayed by ICE officers. “Use of force was deployed for the protection of federal law enforcement and to secure an exit.”
“RIOTERS will not slow us down and ICE operations remain undeterred,” the spokesperson wrote.
KMUN has not been able to determine how many people total were present and information received by others who were at the scene conflicts with ICE’s account. In a video KMUN reviewed, there is no indication that people were blocking ICE vehicles. A few people appear to be standing on the sidewalk in front of the Portway Tavern
The video taken by the woman who was later pepper sprayed by ICE shows ICE vehicles stopped at a red light on Portway Street. The woman, Stefanie Collar, walks into the road and approaches the driver’s side of the first vehicle, shouting expletives.
Collar told KMUN the officer in the driver’s seat started to open the door. She said she could see that he planned to use pepper spray on her. She used her body to slam the door shut.
The video shows that, as the light turns green and the vehicles begin to drive off to turn left onto Marine Drive, an ICE officer rolls down his window and sprays something from a canister at Collar.
There is a sudden flurry of car horns as Collar seems to move back toward the sidewalk, cursing.
Cinthia told KMUN she was in a car behind the ICE vehicles and saw Collar get pepper sprayed. She was one of the drivers who started honking her horn.
“I was honking because they pepper sprayed a lady… and that was not OK,” she said. “What are some words going to do to somebody that’s inside a car? And yet they rolled down their window and pepper sprayed her.”
Port property concerns
The issue of how port property was used during the June 7 operations is expected to come up at a Port of Astoria Commission meeting on June 16.
Port officials have told KMUN they were not aware that ICE was in Clatsop County on June 7 and port leadership had not given the officers permission to use port property.
Commission President Dirk Rohne told KMUN that ICE may have taken advantage of the fact that a U.S. Navy ship was docked at Pier 1. The fenced area in front of the ship was considered under federal control during that time.
Jenny Hansson with the Oregon Attorney General’s Office said the Department of Justice’s sanctuary hotline received several calls from people in Clatsop County referencing KMUN’s coverage on June 7 and voicing their concerns about whether the port had given ICE permission to use the property.
Oregon’s sanctuary law prohibits local and state police as well as state agencies from collaborating with ICE in immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant.
The state plans to send the port an inquiry letter — a standard next step, Hansson said.
The June 7 arrests came after a long lull in ICE operations on the North Coast.
In November and December 2025, officers arrested at least a dozen people. At the time, ICE declined to provide any information about who was arrested and why or provide details about their immigration statuses. At least one woman was later released back to her home in Clatsop County.
Click HERE to see previous coverage of the June 7 arrests.
For some additional coverage on ICE operations in Clatsop County in 2025, go HERE and HERE
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Jenny Hansson’s first name. This story has been updated as well to clarify the nature of the complaints submitted to the state.