DOJ Charges Luis Nino-Moncada, Who Was Shot by Border Patrol in Portland

Last week’s shooting of two Venezuelan immigrants put the city on edge. Federal officials said the man who was shot had repeatedly backed into a Border Patrol car.

The man shot by U.S. Border Patrol officers last week in Portland, Ore., has been charged with trying to injure them with his pickup truck, the Justice Department said Monday, though so far investigators have not been able to find any surveillance footage that captured the shooting.

Federal prosecutors said that Luis Nino-Moncada, 33, who was shot in the arm on Thursday, was being held in the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland on charges of aggravated assault of a federal officer with a dangerous or deadly weapon. He was also charged with damaging federal property at a cost in excess of $1,000.

In court filings, prosecutors said Mr. Nino-Moncada tried to ram Border Patrol vehicles and officers with his red Toyota Tacoma after they stopped him near a Portland hospital on Thursday afternoon. Department of Homeland Security officials have said the agents were trying to find the passenger in the vehicle, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, in connection with a prostitution ring that they said was run by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, according to an affidavit.

The department has said that both people in the car entered the country illegally and that Mr. Nino-Moncada had a removal order signed by a judge in Colorado in November 2024. Ms. Zambrano-Contreras, who was also shot by federal officers, has been released from the hospital and taken to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Wash.

City and state leaders in Oregon expressed outrage at the shooting last week and demanded a transparent investigation. They also said federal immigration authorities should leave Portland. Federal officials said in court filings that they have not been able to find surveillance footage from surrounding businesses that captured the shooting and that the six Border Patrol agents who were involved were not wearing body cameras.

Federal officials have said the shooting victims deserve no sympathy.

“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Monday. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should never have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he never walks free in America again.”

On Friday, Portland’s police chief, Bob Day, confirmed that the pair was connected to the gang, though he provided few details.

Mr. Nino-Moncada was scheduled to make his first federal court appearance before a magistrate judge at 1:30 p.m. Pacific on Monday.

In court filings based on interviews with federal agents, prosecutors said immigration officers used four vehicles to stop Mr. Nino-Moncada’s pickup after they spotted Ms. Zambrano-Contreras in the truck on Thursday. When they approached on foot and ordered the driver out of the truck, he moved it forward and backward several times, ramming other cars, to free the vehicle and then drove away. A Border Patrol officer fired twice into the car as the truck fled, according to the affidavit.

Mr. Nino-Moncada was struck in the arm and Ms. Zambrano-Contreras in the chest. They are being represented by public defenders who declined to speak on the record.

Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, has begun his own investigation into the shooting and has said he believed the F.B.I. would cooperate with that effort.

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