On the streets of downtown Portland on June 18, masked federal agents pulled over and arrested a Colombian man who had just left immigration court. The incident, caught on video and first reported by The Oregonian, showed a white Toyota stopped in Portland’s streets as federal agents walked him away in handcuffs.
Authorities would normally take him to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, field office on Portland’s South Waterfront, giving him adequate time to speak to a lawyer. Instead, a little more than an hour after his arrest, at approximately 10:07 a.m., authorities transferred the man three hours away to the Northwest ICE Processing Center, or NWIPC, in Tacoma, Wash.
“Petitioner was transferred out of the District because there is no ICE detention center in the District of Oregon,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon William Narus wrote in court documents.
Advocates are worried about losing a critical window for help: when ICE first holds people at the agency’s Portland building.
“PIRC dispatchers spoke with the family on Thursday, who confirmed that the man was very briefly held in Portland before being quickly sent to Tacoma and that he was denied an opportunity to speak with his lawyer before transfer,” Natalie Lerner, a board member at Portland Immigrants Rights Coalition, said.
Being sent hours away without first contacting a lawyer or connecting with community support can create significant challenges for people moving through the immigration system, according to Lerner.
Without that stop at the Portland facility, local immigration advocates are struggling to keep track of their clients.
“There was some time to be able to respond, both from a legal and community perspective,” Lerner said. “If people are being held but can’t say where they are, or they’re being sent straight to Tacoma, that time to respond and to get people out of detention is just gone.”
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Authorities closed the ICE field office in June, saying the building’s closure was necessary due to recent protest activity. ICE did not respond to Street Roots’ questions asking the date the building closed, when it will reopen, or which federal agency made the closure decision.
“Access to the building is currently closed to the public due to activity from violent riots, as recognized by local law enforcement authorities,” an ICE spokesperson who did not identify themself said in an email to Street Roots. “There are no changes to ICE operations in any parts of the region based on the riots in Portland.”
ICE did not respond to Street Roots’ requests to clarify if the people it detained still move through the facility or if they have access to attorneys before being transferred.
While federal agencies referred to Portland protest activity as “violent riots,” a review of 12 Portland Police Bureau press releases characterize protest activity around the building differently, with arrests most commonly due to property damage. PPB spokesperson Mike Benner declined to comment directly on the ICE assertion about the protests.
“We’ll refer you to our nightly news releases,” Benner said.
In its press releases, PPB has described the protests as “largely lawful.” PPB arrested 25 individuals for “criminal activity” since protests began, with a high of 10 arrests on June 13, according to the press releases.
Mayor Keith Wilson’s office is aware of the closure, according to public records obtained by Street Roots. Stephanie Howard, the city’s director of community safety also confirmed the building’s closure.
A spokesperson for the Mexican consulate also confirmed to Street Roots that the building is closed. Officials there worried that the closure would further complicate people’s immigration cases. They encouraged people to take photos if they arrive for an appointment and find they cannot get in.
“People who need to do their follow ups, or they just receive their appointments, they’re going to find the building will be closed,” the spokesperson said. “So that concerns us.”
The lack of clarity has already created chaos for local immigrants, attorneys and immigrant rights advocates, according to public records and multiple sources who spoke to Street Roots.
A win for who?
The closure of a major ICE facility may look like a win for ICE opponents who have long called for the agency to be abolished. But while immigrant and refugee rights activists who spoke to Street Roots broadly agree that ICE uses inhumane tactics and should be eliminated, they said the closure of the local office deepens an already complex legal and logistical process faced by those at risk of deportation.
In Portland, immigration attorneys from local rapid response networks can typically arrive at the ICE facility within minutes of a person’s arrival to advocate for their release.
“Generally, lawyers are allowed in the building to advocate for people, and sometimes they’re more or less successful, or sometimes they’re only able to get people into a less bad proceeding, rather than actually getting them released,” Lerner said. “But it’s one of the tools in our toolbox, and it’s hard not to have that tool.”
The local closure and the unpredictability of how ICE is maneuvering have created confusion for attorneys and community organizers working to support people through the process, according to Lerner. As long as the agency is active, immigrant rights advocates said their focus is on how they can best support people through their process.
“PIRC is an organization that believes ICE should not exist,” Lerner said. “It’s more a question of, what are the steps that we take toward abolition? In what order does that abolition need to happen? If we could snap our fingers and all of ICE is just gone tomorrow, that would obviously be the best.”
While the Tacoma facility is a detention center where ICE holds people indefinitely, Portland’s ICE field office is not a detention center. Instead, according to the ICE spokesperson, it is a sub field office. That means ICE requires people to check in regularly or arbitrarily as part of the legal immigration process, and only holds them there until they are released or transferred to a detention center like the NWIPC. The facility can process an average of 10 to 15 detainees daily, and ICE cannot legally hold detainees for more than 12 hours or overnight, according to its local land use permit.
At the Tacoma facility, on the other hand, it’s difficult to win a quick release once shuttled there. On average, 27% of people spend less than 30 days in detention at the NWIPC, while 26% spend 30 to 60 days, and another 19% spend 90 to 180 days, according to the most recent available data through March 2024. Run by the for-profit company The GEO Group, the NWIPC is a detention hub for those arrested locally and in other states.
People held at that facility have the lowest chance of an immigration judge granting bond of any detention facility in the U.S., at just 3% of all cases, according to a lawsuit filed by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in March.
And the conditions there are substandard, according to reports from inside. Detainees at the NWIPC have reported receiving low-quality food, which regularly shows up after 10 p.m. — sometimes as late as midnight.
Medical care is scarce, the wait to see a doctor is long, and detainees report being required to wake up as early as 5 a.m. to go to the infirmary. Many have reported rarely being able to go outdoors, and when they are taken outdoors, it is for very short periods.
As of June 1, authorities are currently holding over 51,300 people in ICE detention facilities nationwide. Immigration authorities arrested nearly 29,000 people in the month of May, according to the most recent Trac Immigration data. As of May 15, average daily arrests under President Donald Trump were 2% higher than under President Joe Biden in fiscal year 2024, with removals 1% lower than Biden.
Local responses
Portlanders remain active in the face of federal immigration policy. At the time of publishing, nearly 15,000 people signed an online petition calling on the Portland City Council to revoke a permit for the building where ICE operates, saying the building’s owners profit from violating basic human rights.
“The undersigned do not support the operation of this facility within the city limits of Portland, Oregon,” the petition says. “We ask the City Council to review, appeal, and revoke the permit to end the inhumane treatment of fellow human beings and close the facility.”
The Portland City Council unanimously approved that permit in 2011, allowing Rodney Grinberg — on behalf of the current owner, Lindquist Development Company — to develop the ICE facility. Then-Mayor Sam Adams, alongside commissioners Amanda Fritz, Nick Fish, Randy Leonard and Dan Saltzman voted in favor.
While revoking the permit could disrupt ICE activities in Portland, immigration advocates, including Sandy Chung, executive director for the ACLU of Oregon, said it would also create barriers for people detained there. Removing a local office where lawyers can respond quickly would cause harm, even if unintentional, for immigrants and their attorneys.
“People being able to access the ICE building is really critical for a lot of things,” Chung said. “One, because there are people who actually have to attend appointments, and if you miss the appointment, then there can be deportation orders. And we know part of ICE’s strategy, it seems like, is to close out some of their buildings so people do have to travel hundreds of miles even in Oregon.”
The petition may serve more as an ideological backlash to Trump’s hardline immigration efforts, advocates said, while well-established organizers continue strategizing in other ways to materially hold the administration at bay.
“There are many very well-experienced advocacy organizations who are working on defending immigrant refugee communities in Oregon, who are very knowledgeable about how we’ve built a rapid response system in Oregon … and none of us are part of or leading this petition,” Chung said.
She added that Oregon has some of the strongest sanctuary laws in the U.S., including legal representation through Equity Corps of Oregon, which immediately responds to people who have been detained. That is thanks to decades of work by local organizations, according to Chung.
“To be honest, the organizations that have been doing this work, they’re not dumb,” Chung said. “If strategically taking down that ICE building would be super beneficial, we also have plenty of organizers and policy folks who would have already been working on that.”
Pedro Anglada Cordero, a collaborator on the petition, pushed back on that in a written statement to Street Roots on June 25.
“It is infuriating that highly paid individuals hiding behind non-profit organizations have become the strongest advocates for ICE,” Cordero wrote. “Those who benefit most from the suffering caused by ICE are the first to defend the detention facility. While families I communicate regularly with express their fear of leaving their homes, the intervention these organizations advocate for is to leave the building that facilitates the arrests and raids intact, while claiming to be Abolitionists, and that is very dangerous.”
Chung responded to the statement in a text message to Street Roots June 25.
“All of our efforts to defend our most vulnerable communities, including our immigrant and refugee neighbors, are important,” Chung wrote. “All the partners we work with — whether they are established organizations, community groups, or individuals — want ICE abolished. As we work towards this larger goal, we need to engage in harm reduction for the real people and families who are being harassed, kidnapped, and imprisoned by the Trump administration. We need to center and follow the choices and wishes of impacted community members.”
State of affairs
Trump said in a June 15 post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he intends to expand immigration efforts, particularly in cities run by Democrats.
“We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” Trump said.
Days later, on June 19, a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling allowed Trump to keep the National Guard deployed to quell pro-immigration protests in Los Angeles, despite California Governor Gavin Newsom’s objections.
“If that happens here, it doesn’t mean that we don’t continue resisting,” Chung said. “But this test board that we’re on, of defending democracy, gets a lot more complicated.”
Walker Keller, the PIRC coordinator, said having community members in front of the building or accompanying people in and out is an important part of supporting those most impacted. And despite her critiques and pleas to activists to join experienced organizations in the cause, Chung cautioned against common framing of “good protestors” or “bad protestors,” saying the framing is off base.
“The appropriate frame is: Are we being effective in our resistance tactics and strategies, and where are we trying to get to?” Chung said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with a statement that was not available at the time of initial publication.
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This article appears in June 18, 2025.
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