A 47-year-old Portland woman Friday was sentenced to time served, just under four months, for intimidating a federal officer outside Portland U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in June and resisting arrest after she had violated her release conditions.
Julie M. Winters approached the gate of the ICE building in South Portland on the night of June 24 with a bike lock and chain, intending to lock the gate shut. When officers emerged from the property, she backed away but later pulled out a knife, waved it at officers and then threw it, according to court records, prosecutors and her lawyer.
Prosecutor Lewis Burkhart said Winters threw the knife toward a federal officer but defense attorney Benjamin Andersen said she tossed it away behind a fence and not at anyone.
Winters pleaded guilty to intimidating an officer and resisting arrest.
“I made a mistake,” she told U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai in U.S. District Court in Portland.
Winters, who lived across the street from the ICE office, admitted she tried to chain the vehicle gate shut to “temporarily prevent ICE from hurting people in my neighborhood.”
She also admitted to pulling the knife and throwing it but said she didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
“I don’t deny that was the wrong answer,” she said.
Winters was living in a nearby housing complex at the time but a judge ordered her to keep away from the blocks around the ICE building after her arrest. She was allowed to return to her apartment for a few hours only to feed her cat.
But she subsequently returned to the apartment in violation of her release conditions and then struggled with deputy U.S. marshals when they moved to arrest her later. She also has taken to social media to criticize federal law enforcement, prosecutors and decry her case and sentencing.
Burkhart suggested that Winters has untreated mental health needs that are “manifesting in these kind of outbursts. She really needs help to try to treat those. …
Right now, she’s kind of running wild.”
Winters disputed Burkhart’s characterization. She said she has been in counseling for seven years but has never a mental health diagnosis. She said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from a prior physical confrontation with Portland police that led to other charges pending against her in state court.
“I’m not some crazy anarchist and I don’t have mental health issues to the point where a prosecutor should decide for me where my mental health stands,” she said.
The judge accepted the time-served sentence negotiated under a plea agreement. She’ll be on supervised release for three years and ordered not to return to a specified geographic area near the ICE building.
Winters is one of 41 people arrested on federal felony or misdemeanor allegations stemming from protests outside the ICE building since June.
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