NEWPORT, OR— The chilly breeze and sandy shores in this Oregon fishing city have shielded this town from scorching heat for decades. But despite the mist in the air, rumors here spread like wildfire.
The latest of those hunches came straight from city officials and has since commanded national attention. Newport City Manager Nina Vetter and Mayor Jan Kaplan signed onto a Nov. 10 statement suggesting the Trump administration could be planning Oregon’s first Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. The site they suspected? The municipal airport of the city, home to more than 10,000 people.
All they had were a few clues. A life-saving rescue helicopter had just been relocated from the Coast Guard’s Newport Municipal Air facility to a station in North Bend nearly 70 miles away. A defense contractor wanted to lease land in December next to that facility in support of “federal operations.” Job listings showed private companies were recruiting detention officers with ICE experience in Newport.
Fast-forward more than three weeks, and hundreds of Oregonians from Newport and nearby have turned out to two public meetings to voice unanimous opposition to the facility. The state of Oregon has filed a federal lawsuit seeking the return of the helicopter, and a local group supporting fishermen has done the same, winning a 14-day order just before Thanksgiving to return it to Newport. In the meantime, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Gov. Tina Kotek, and U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle have all sought answers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to no avail.
“Until we can get confirmation, we can’t talk about zoning and permits and and we can’t talk about how it might affect our economy and whether we want these things here,” said state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis. “Should a community be able to have some say on whether a major facility like this moves into the neighborhood? I think the answer is yes, but the federal government is not owning up.”
Across Oregon, local governments have debated the extent to which they should resist or comply with increasingly aggressive federal immigration policy, declaring states of emergencies, seeking assistance from local law enforcement and turning off license plate reading cameras for fear of sensitive data being leaked. The city of Hillsboro, for instance, recently backtracked on a directive warning city employees against filming ICE officers, a policy it justified by citing the homeland security department’s claim that such activity could constitute harassment.
Newport’s response, however, opened with a more unapologetically adversarial stance toward the federal government. The approach risked drawing the ire of the homeland security department, which has not shied away from slamming journalists and politicians who it claims are stoking fear and spreading misinformation. Local officials and advocates statewide, meanwhile, have bet on going public ahead of what they anticipate will be a lengthy legal and political battle.
“People know that we can win on this,” said Sidra Pierson, a senior organizer for the Cottage Grove-based Rural Organizing Project. “There’s a precedent in Oregon from being the first state to pass a sanctuary law.”
The nonprofit claimed a major victory when it won a suit against the city of Cottage Grove and its police department following reports of immigration authorities accessing local jails and police officers racially profiling local residents. It marked the only instance so far of the public successfully suing a local law enforcement agency in Oregon for violating its sanctuary laws, which prohibit local and state law enforcement resources being used for federal immigration enforcement without a court order. The group also helped secure the end of immigration detentions at Sheridan’s federal prison in 2018 and an ICE contract with The Dalles’ regional Oregon jail in 2020.
‘A public accountability campaign’
Even though a federal defense contractor has since withdrawn its inquiry about leasing land at the airport and some other contractors’ job postings have been taken down, there are still signs the federal government is interested in Newport.
Wyden, who hosts town halls in every county every year, had about 600 people attend his Nov. 23 meeting in Newport. Some attendees waved small flags decorated with a crossed-out ice cube and others held American ones.
Sitting in the front row were members of the local nonprofit Newport Fishermen’s Wives and a 14-year-old girl who recounted the moment she found out about her father’s September ICE detainment. Wyden invited her to share her story, nodding toward her during his answers to constituent questions.
“Donald Trump is not doing what he said he would do in 2024. He said on immigration he was going to go after terrorists, drug cartels, murderers, people committing violent crime,” he said. “Nobody said that he was going to go after that little girl’s dad.”
Listening intently was Newport City Councilor Angel Aparicio-Reyes and his 8-year-old daughter. The 32-year-old was born in Newport and returned to the town after meeting his wife in Washington and attending school in California. Though Spanish was the primary language of his household as a child, he has memories of local doctors and teachers from elementary school helping him communicate in English without judgement.
Now he’s had to sit his daughter down, warning her that him being a citizen may not be enough to stop ICE from detaining him because of his appearance. The city is 16.7% Latino, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, and Aparicio-Reyes said many families are beginning to have that conversation with their kids.
“There are still people out there that do not like us,” he said. “It’s a very real thought that I could be taken away.”
Such a possibility across the Oregon Coast has tugged at heartstrings, but it has also led some to turn to the court of public opinion.
Newport City Councilor CM Hall at an emergency city meeting Nov. 12 said she was “willing to call out and name the people who take these jobs that are posted.” Hotels have informed Newport officials about a federal contractor attempting to book hundreds of rooms for up to a year starting in December on the Oregon Coast.
The Lincoln City chapter of the progressive group Indivisible told the Capital Chronicle it’s discussing a “public accountability campaign” to provide residents information about which companies are supporting ICE’s efforts on the Oregon Coast.
It would not be the first time the helicopter’s removal spurred the town into action ahead of the dangerous Dungeness crab fishing season. In late 2014, the nonprofit Fishermen’s Wives took the Obama administration to federal court over the closure of Newport’s Coast Guard facility. Congress ended up passing a law that requires notice and explanation from the homeland security department should a reduction in Coast Guard facility activity take place.
But the Trump administration has not provided details on its plans in Newport. In a prior statement, the U.S. Coast Guard asserted that the Newport air facility is a staging site for specific events where there has never been a permanent assigned aircraft. ICE did not respond to the Capital Chronicle’s requests for comment.
Taunette Dixon, a member of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives who is set to begin fishing with her husband on a family boat in the coming weeks, described that claim as “wordsmithing a bit.” She noted that there has always been a Newport helicopter in rotation from the Coast Guard’s North Bend station. The Newport Coast Guard facility was established in 1987 after the fishing vessel Lasseigne capsized about 20 miles off the coast two years prior, killing three crewmen.
“They have minutes before they have a lack of use of their limbs. Within an hour, even if they have a flotation device, they don’t have a high survival rate,” Dixon said. “So we are looking at them recovering our loved ones, not rescuing our loved ones.”
Limited options
Concern about a Newport ICE facility comes amid the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration nationwide. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported more than 560 arrests in October throughout the Portland area, and at least 300 detentions in November were reported statewide, according to the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition’s hotline. The GOP’s summer tax and spending law infused a record $165 billion in funding for the homeland security department.
An ICE contractor on Nov. 20 also asked the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development about a “proposed action” in Newport using the 1972 Coastal Zone Management Act. The law allows for a federal agency to supersede a state’s objections to its project should it be “consistent to the maximum extent practicable.” Oregon could sue if it contested the federal government’s assessment.
But in some ways, the issue is not squarely partisan. State Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, told the local radio outlet KYAQ that he doesn’t “see where a detention facility in Newport would be helpful.” On the East Coast, an attempt to scout a New York Coast Guard site for detention purposes drew swift opposition from a local Republican U.S. representative, The New York Times reported Nov. 14.
There was also interest in Oregon for ICE under the Biden administration. An August 2024 ICE request for information sought facilities in West Coast states, including Oregon, that “may be publicly or privately owned and publicly or privately operated.” Biden’s Department of Justice worked in federal court to strike down California law banning private immigration detention centers in 2022, casting doubt on the enforceability of a similar 2021 Oregon law.
If legal battles were not able to stop a Newport ICE facility, Lincoln County would likely see a significant increase in the detention and arrest of immigrants, as research on similar areas nationwide has shown. That could significantly impact life for the local Guatemalan and Mexican community, who play a key role in the area’s fish-processing, floristry, landscaping, nursing and tourist economy.
Eva Gonzalez Muñoz, board president of local community group Centro de Ayuda, remembers moving to Newport as a 6-year-old in 1991, recalling only one other family from Mexico in the city at the time. Her landlords had relocated her family from a previous hotel they owned in Lake Tahoe, California.
This year, Muñoz said her group has paused several community celebrations and events, because no one wants to make themselves a target. A widely-condemned December 2024 letter circulating in Lincoln County encouraged people to track and report “brown folks” without permanent legal status to authorities. And a local conservative group reportedly crashed a recent legal briefing on immigrant rights arranged by another local Latino community group.
“We are witnessing people not going to work, not going to the stores,” Muñoz said. “We’re trying to scramble to find funding to be able to help these people pay their rent, pay their food, and we are actually delivering food to households that do not want to go outside.”
The city of Newport, in the meantime, has tapped outside legal counsel with the explicit goal of responding to the federal government’s plans for a potential ICE facility. Kate Sinkins, a Lincoln City-based immigration attorney, suspects the municipal airstrip attracted the federal government as a potential vehicle for enacting quick deportations. But as she put it: “They have a fight on their hands.”
“I think they thought, ‘We’ll bring jobs, we’ll bring money. People will be happy.’ But nobody is happy, and nobody will take those jobs,” she said. “People will boycott any company that works with the ICE facility. Mark my words.”
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.
