A woman shot in the chest by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Portland earlier this year spent nearly two weeks in jail after she repeatedly violated a curfew imposed as part of her probationary sentence for entering the U.S. illegally.
Federal probation officers found Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, 32 violated her curfew 20 to 30 times, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Edmonds. The curfew initially was 7 p.m. and then modified in mid-April to 9 p.m.
Zambrano-Contreras continued to return home late or leave in the middle of the night despite probation officers’ repeated efforts to get her to comply, they said.
“It got to the point where it was just completely untenable,” Supervisory U.S. Probation Officer Dan Painter told U.S. District Judge Stacie F. Beckerman.
Authorities rearrested Zambrano-Contreras on May 7 and held her in the Yamhill County Jail. She appeared Tuesday in federal court and admitted to the violations.
The judge allowed her release later Tuesday after the prosecutor and probation officer agreed she should remain on probation.
Zambrano-Contreras, a Venezuelan national, had pleaded guilty shortly after the shooting to the misdemeanor illegal entry in 2023 and was sentenced to one year of probation with electronic monitoring and a curfew.
Zambrano-Contreras stayed out late for a variety of reasons, said defense lawyer Conor Huseby, including to attend a cookout with friends, to help her son when police pulled him over for driving without a license and to walk to a corner store to buy food.
Huseby said he has impressed on her the importance of following the 9 p.m. curfew unless she has a medical emergency.
He said Zambrano-Contreras also recognizes that continued violations might jeopardize her efforts to stay in the U.S.
Beckerman said she was concerned about the nature and number of the violations. She warned Zambrano-Contreras that she risks having her probation revoked and spending many more weeks, perhaps months, in custody, if she continues to disregard her curfew.
This “has to stop,” Beckerman said.
Federal Homeland Security officials have said Zambrano-Contreras was the target of the Border Patrol’s stop of a Toyota Tacoma in Southeast Portland on Jan. 8, alleging she was involved in a prostitution ring associated with the Tren de Aragua gang and a prior shooting in Portland. She has not been charged in any prostitution ring or shooting, and Portland police said she was never identified as a suspect in a prior shooting.
Zambrano-Contreras was wounded as she sat in the front passenger seat of a pickup when a Border Patrol officer fired two shots into the truck in the parking lot of an Adventist Health medical office in Southeast Portland.
The driver, Luis David Niño-Moncada, 33, is accused of assaulting a Border Patrol officer when he put the truck into reverse and struck an unoccupied federal rental car several times. He then struck an officer in the chest with the truck’s front end as he turned his wheel, prosecutors allege.
That Border Patrol officer then went around the front of the truck and fired into the driver’s window, wounding Niño-Moncada in the arm and Zambrano-Contreras, who was in the front passenger seat, in the chest.
Niño-Moncada sped out of the parking lot and called 911 from an apartment building about three miles away. He has pleaded not guilty to assault of a federal officer and remains in custody pending trial. Trial is set for Sept. 8.
©2026 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
