Woman Wounded in Portland Border Patrol Shooting Gets Probation for Illegal Entry

A Venezuelan woman shot and wounded by a Border Patrol agent during a Jan. 8 immigration stop in a Portland, Oregon, medical-complex parking lot has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the United States and was sentenced to one year of probation. Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras appeared by video from ICE detention in Tacoma, Washington, and will be allowed to remain out of custody in Oregon under a negotiated deal that includes location monitoring and a nighttime curfew, along with a ban on being in areas where prostitution is occurring. The FBI has told the court it found no surveillance or other video of the shooting, in which the same agent also wounded driver Luis Nino-Moncada after he allegedly reversed a pickup repeatedly into an unoccupied Border Patrol rental car and struck the agent, who then fired two shots claiming fear for his life. Nino-Moncada has been indicted on federal charges of aggravated assault on a federal employee and damaging federal property and remains jailed pending a March jury trial, while Portland’s police chief and DHS say both he and Zambrano-Contreras entered the U.S. illegally in 2022–23 and have "some nexus" to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, though they were not suspects in an earlier gang shooting. The incident, coming one day after an ICE shooting death in Minneapolis, has fed protests over aggressive federal immigration tactics and the lack of video evidence in lethal and near-lethal encounters.