A liberal Portland judge has ordered the pretrial release of several antifa-affiliated activists facing federal charges for their alleged violent involvement in the uprisings against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Stacie Fatka Beckerman, a federal magistrate judge who donated to Democrats, freed at least four known antifa affiliates federally charged over serious crimes connected to the anti-ICE riots, according to a Washington Examiner review of court records.
Joshua Ames Cartrette, a convicted felon accused of assaulting a federal officer; Ginovanni Joseph Brumbelow, who allegedly tried to stab a Customs and Border Protection agent with a wooden stake; Deni Jungic Wolf, who is suspected of punching a federal officer in the head; and alleged anti-ICE rioter Eli Victor McKenzie were all released without bail after appearing before Beckerman in separate preliminary proceedings.
Cartrette, 46, of Oregon City, allegedly attacked a federal agent and kicked deployed tear-gas cannisters toward other officers during a declared June 14 riot outside the ICE office in south Portland, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Authorities allege that Cartrette was part of a far-left mob that launched mortar fireworks, rocks, bricks, and glass bottles at the facility to burn down the building following nationwide “No Kings” protests. Cartrette, a self-described “anarchist” who uses the comrade moniker “Zero,” has frequently been featured in writings published on the antifa blog “It’s Going Down.” If convicted, Cartrette faces a maximum one-year prison sentence.
That same evening, Brumbelow, 21, of Gresham, allegedly interfered with the arrest of a fellow anti-ICE rioter and used a “pointed” stake to strike the back of a CPB agent’s head, according to probable cause statements.
Video evidence allegedly captures Brumbelow, dressed in black, bashing the officer over the head with the wooden end of a protest sign. Brumbelow faces up to eight years in federal prison for felony assault of an officer.
Wolf, 19, of Portland, is accused of assaulting a federal officer at a June 16 standoff outside the local ICE office. When agents moved in to clear a make-shift barricade erected by anti-ICE activists, Wolf allegedly punched an officer with enough force to knock his mask off and expose him to pepper spray deployed during crowd-control operations. Charging documents say Wolf was armed with a knife. Assaulting a federal officer resulting in bodily injury is punishable by up to 20 years behind bars. Last year, Wolf was reported to Portland police as an autistic, teenage runaway.
McKenzie, 21, of Portland, is charged with failing to obey a lawful order at the June 16 riot near the city’s ICE office. The offense is a Class C misdemeanor and carries a penalty of up to 30 days in custody.
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Federal Election Commission filings show that Beckerman donated to a handful of Democratic causes prior to her judicial appointment. In 2014, as an assistant U.S. attorney, she gave $270 to the Democratic Party of Oregon and $250 to Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) reelection campaign.
Oregon State Bar documents show that Beckerman made those campaign contributions just before she was considered for the U.S. magistrate judge position.
That year, a merit selection panel chaired by former Democratic operative Dwight Holton picked Beckerman from a pool of candidates and recommended her to the court. Clinton-appointed Chief Judge Ann Aiken then approved Beckerman’s appointment for her first eight-year term in 2015. Following another panel review, Beckerman was reappointed in 2023 by order of Obama-appointed Chief Judge Marco A. Hernandez.
According to Beckerman’s resume, she presided over a “restorative justice” initiative in Oregon, Deferred Sentencing to Advance Rehabilitation and Treatment. D-START is a pilot post-guilty plea program that offers offenders either the dismissal of their federal charges or an alternative sentence to imprisonment.
Amid the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020, Beckerman released several federally charged rioters pending trial, including two activists accused of physically obstructing the entrance to an ICE facility; a man who allegedly tried to punch a female Portland police officer in the face; and an arsonist later convicted of setting fire to the Multnomah County Justice Center, which houses the police headquarters and lock-up.
In a 2020 reflection piece, titled “On Liberty, During a Pandemic,” Beckerman wrote about “balancing the serious health risks of keeping an individual in custody with the serious risk to the community if released.” At the time, Beckerman was the magistrate judge on duty for all criminal matters heard in the Portland courthouse, which was under nightly siege, and fielded a flood of requests for release from pretrial detention, with many of the inmates citing COVID-19 exposure as just cause for their freedom.
A conflicted Beckerman reflected, “The hardest part of my job during this pandemic has been telling an individual, as we sit face-to-face, that I cannot sign his release order.” Beckerman noted that those awaiting trial in federal custody typically are not nonviolent or first-time offenders; defendants are detained because they pose a serious risk of danger to the public.
“On one hand, arguments for wide-scale release resonated,” Beckerman penned. “On the other [hand], I found myself signing an alarming number of new bank robbery complaints, noting an uptick in local shots fired, and concerned about the increase in calls to domestic violence hotlines.”
Beckerman also has a history of ruling against Republican plaintiffs in election security cases.
In 2023, she tossed out an Oregon lawsuit lodged by a group of GOP candidates over alleged vulnerabilities in the state’s mail-in voting and electronic tabulation systems. Beckerman ruled that “generalized grievances” about Oregon’s election process are “too speculative to qualify as a concrete injury” and therefore lack legal standing to sue.
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That year, Beckerman similarly dismissed an Oregon suit alleging election irregularities in the 2022 primaries, a decision the plaintiffs argued was “highly premature” and outside the scope of a magisterial referral.
Beckerman was contacted for comment.