As they ramp up enforcement in Oregon, federal immigration authorities may be planning to expand their presence on the central coast.
Since late last week, local, state and federal officials have been trying to confirm rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to set up an outpost in Newport. While little clarity has emerged from the Trump administration, those officials are now sending up warning flares.
The city of Newport issued a statement Monday saying its leaders have learned the city’s airport — which has long hosted a U.S. Coast Guard air facility — might be at the top of ICE’s list for a new outpost.
“City leadership is actively working with local, state and federal legislators to verify and assess this information,” the release said.
Meanwhile, both the state representative and the congresswoman representing Newport told OPB they are trying to better understand what the federal government has planned.
“There are persistent rumors and reports that ICE is in the process of expanding operations near the Newport Municipal Airport,” state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, said. “Predictably, the federal agencies that actually know something are not saying.”
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. But recent changes in Newport have fueled speculation that ICE may be coming.
U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle told OPB Monday that she’d confirmed the U.S. Coast Guard recently relocated a rescue helicopter it typically keeps at the city’s airport. While Hoyle said she had not confirmed the move was made to make room for an ICE operation, she said that was her suspicion.
“ICE coming to Newport to terrorize our immigrant workers is one issue,” Hoyle said in a text message. “The other is that a Coast Guard rescue helicopter being moved from Newport to North Bend (Oregon) on the cusp of crabbing season puts lives in danger. That’s a fact.”
The Coast Guard has operated a rescue helicopter out of Newport for nearly four decades. Congress approved the outpost in the ’80s, amid concerns that a Coast Guard base in North Bend, roughly 100 miles south, was too far away to promptly respond to emergencies in an area with a large commercial fishing fleet.
Past attempts to close the Newport air base have prompted fierce outcry from groups like Newport Fishermen’s Wives. But Hoyle said Monday she’d learned the Coast Guard moved the helicopter to North Bend on Oct. 30.
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, speculation about ICE’s interest in Newport ramped up after the city received an inquiry from a third-party contractor that wanted to lease space at the airport for an unnamed government agency. A spokesman for the city of Newport, John Fuller, confirmed Monday that the city had received a request, but would not provide details.
Newport’s city council will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the matter.
The city’s news release prompted a flurry of statements from the state’s congressional delegation.
“Any unilateral decision made 3,000 miles away from Newport about using any part of this coastal community for an ICE detention facility would be both alarming and asinine,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said in a statement. “I will, of course, be teaming up with local and state officials to wrestle more information from the Trump administration about the prospects for such a scheme.”
The state’s other Democratic U.S. senator, Jeff Merkley, said in a statement that “installing ICE agents on Coast Guard bases is unacceptable.”
Possible news of a new ICE facility in Oregon comes as that agency’s facility in Portland has been at the center of a national tug-of-war.
Months of protests outside that building — most of them small and peaceful — prompted President Trump to announce in late September that he would send National Guard troops to the site. That sparked a legal battle that, while still ongoing, resulted in a federal judge’s permanent order on Friday that the protests did not meet the legal threshold for troop involvement.
While it’s unclear what, if anything, immigration officials might have planned for the Oregon Coast, the agency faces potential sanctions for its operations at the Portland facility. The city of Portland has accused ICE of violating a land use policy that prohibits it from detaining people at the facility for longer than 12 hours.
Oregon is one of a handful of states where ICE does not have a detention facility. The agency typically sends detainees from the Portland area to a massive detention center in Tacoma, Washington.
When asked about why ICE might have keyed in on Newport, Gomberg noted that the city’s airport is remote — unlike Portland’s ICE outpost.
“We’ve got access to an airstrip and we’ve got a fairly isolated area,” Gomberg said, adding that Newport is reliant on the fishing and hospitality industries, which both use immigrant labor. “We’re very concerned, if a center is opened there, how this is going to impact local families.”
