People without homes necessarily spend more time in public spaces, increasing their risk of being detained by Immigration & Customs Enforcement. And more immigrant families are facing eviction due to detention or deportation and losing access to important programs like SNAP.
Nationally, ICE has taken to patrolling social services organizations frequented by low-income or unsheltered asylum seekers. Homeless outreach workers in New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego have seen ICE detain and deport people in various living situations — on the street, in government-sponsored housing and in shelters.
For those living outside, public and private spaces can be blurred. ICE has shown up to at least two homeless shelters in Portland — creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty for homeless immigrants seeking shelter, social services and other support.
Oregon was the first state to pass a sanctuary law in 1987. Now, it’s one of 12 sanctuary states in the country, plus Washington D.C. Portland is one of 18 sanctuary cities in the U.S. That means state and city employees here are prohibited from aiding federal immigration enforcement.
In some ways, Oregon affords unique protections to unhoused immigrants, because of its sanctuary laws and health care programs for all low-income adults, regardless of citizenship status.
Sanctuary states enforce very specific laws clearly labeling public and private spaces in restaurants, food pantries and homeless shelters. In a restaurant, for example, customers (and therefore ICE agents) may access all front-of-house spaces, including dining room areas, lobby areas and restrooms. Private spaces in a restaurant are typically designated for the kitchen, for chef and manager offices, and for employee-only areas.
The National Immigration Law Center encourages social services organizations to minimize public areas where service seekers gather. In homeless shelters, this could mean rearranging waiting and reception areas behind closed doors, with signs clearly marking spaces “private.”
In shelters, the layout of the building can sometimes muddle the distinction between public and private areas. Some congregate shelters do not have clear distinctions between lobby or reception areas and clearly-designated sleeping or private areas.
The first sanctuary state
Of the twelve social services or shelter organizations contacted for this article, only two agreed to speak with Street Roots — one under the condition of anonymity — because they were afraid of scrutiny or retaliation from federal immigration officers. For the same reasons, homeless immigrants were hesitant or afraid to be interviewed, even under total anonymity, and staff helping immigrants access housing and other resources feared drawing attention to their locations.
The Asylum Seeker Solidarity Collective is a Portland-based mutual aid group that helps place asylum seekers in host homes, family shelters and temporary housing, while accessing health or legal resources. For unhoused immigrants, one advantage of living in Oregon compared to other states is that it is one of 19 states that will issue driver’s licenses or identification cards to undocumented immigrants, according to a spokesperson for the citizens’ collective, who asked to remain anonymous in order to avoid risking the safety of the asylum seekers the organization works with.
“Our homeless system is pretty good at helping people get IDs,” she said. “Fortunately, in Oregon we’re in a state where folks who are undocumented or asylum seekers or have a status like that are able to get an ID — an Oregon ID — which is not true everywhere.”
Oregon was the first state to pass a sanctuary law in 1987. Now, it’s one of 12 sanctuary states in the country, plus Washington D.C. Portland is one of 18 sanctuary cities in the U.S. That means state and city employees here are prohibited from aiding federal immigration enforcement. (Map is assembled from city ordinances and state laws/Etta O’Donnell-King).
That has been the case since 2019, when state lawmakers passed the Equal Access to Roads Act. Under the law, anyone in Oregon is able to get a driver’s license, regardless of their immigration status. In 2021, lawmakers went further, passing a law to provide free IDs to anyone experiencing homelessness. Both laws make it easier for immigrants and anyone experiencing homelessness to access shelter and other services.
Many shelters require photo identification as part of the intake process. Identification cards double as a means of accessing social services like the Oregon Health Plan and navigating daily tasks, such as enrolling in education, renting a home and setting up a bank account.
“Our police and local government officials are not cooperating with ICE, our government-run shelters are not cooperating with ICE — and can’t,” said the collective’s spokesperson. “It’s against the law for them to do that, which isn’t the case everywhere.”
Portland Police Bureau, for example, is prohibited from assisting with federal immigration enforcement. While Portland police do forcibly displace Portlanders living in encampments, they are barred from asking about immigration status while doing so. PPB serves arrest warrants and issues citations to people violating the city’s camping ordinance, but officers can’t disclose a person’s citizenship status or personally identifying information to federal immigration enforcement unless required by a judge.
Fear and uncertainty
Nonetheless, immigrants — housed and unhoused — in Portland are living in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.
In a 2023 report conducted by Evicted in Oregon, “Unjust and Unsafe: The Eviction Experiences of Latine Immigrant and Farmworker Tenants in Oregon,” tenants said they worried eviction court proceedings could lead to deportation and family separation. Because of their immigration status, tenants hesitated to speak up about landlords’ unfair practices and uninhabitable housing conditions.
“Equally concerning is that landlords hold a significant amount of power and discretion and are equipped with legal protection to capitalize on these fears, resulting in unfair treatment towards tenants that affects their housing stability,” the report states.
The collective’s spokesperson said the organization’s work shifted when Trump came back into office, because more families faced eviction after primary income-earners in families were detained or deported. Even if they were ultimately released, they were unable to pay their rent while they were detained.
“People are afraid of getting evicted,” the spokesperson said. “They’re afraid of their landlords or their neighbors calling ICE because they’re having conflict. All these things come together to make it harder to couchsurf, especially when you have kids, for a lot of folks who have unstable status.”
She added that immigrant families with legal status are less willing to provide temporary shelter, out of fear that temporarily housing an undocumented person could increase the chances of ICE showing up at their home and detaining their own loved ones.
“Now we’re seeing when folks are getting evicted because of detentions or fear of work,” she said. “They might have friends and family who have their apartments, but they are much more nervous about letting their friends and family crash because, of course, that can get them evicted.”
Very few resources
Homeless immigrants face language barriers, long waitlists for family shelters and traumatic separations in congregate shelters. Because the majority of people seeking shelter in Portland are not immigrants, most services are not attuned to their unique needs.
In Multnomah County, there are only two designated family shelters where immigrant families at risk of homelessness can stay. They are in such high demand that wait times can reach several months. In addition, shelters are often limited in their ability to accommodate non-English speaking guests, because there are so few bilingual or multilingual case managers or because they lack any interpretation services at all.
Congregate shelters can be traumatic for immigrant families. These temporary living facilities typically provide dormitory style sleeping areas, with bunkbeds, cots or mats in communal areas. Congregate shelters will frequently separate men and women.
“For folks who have had family separation already happen to them on their journeys or through detention here in the U.S., or are worried about ICE, not having a door that you can shut is pretty scary,” the spokesperson said. “And having the adults separated too is pretty scary, so it’s not often a good fit for this community.”
Here, too, language barriers are an additional source of discomfort and fear.
“If you’re sharing a congregate space with people and they’re yelling something or they’re speaking to you and you’re not understanding — that could be really confusing and scary,” the spokesperson said.
With so few case managers and shelter staff able to communicate in asylum seekers’ native languages, immigrants experiencing housing instability live in constant uncertainty.
“We, as the non-impacted solidarity organizer people, feel pretty reassured by the lengths that the county and also private providers are going to keep people safe,” the spokesperson said. “But trying to communicate that in an atmosphere of such intense fear is really hard.”
That fear is not unfounded.
“We do know one parent back in September who was a shelter resident and ICE did go to the shelter and look for them,” the spokesperson said. “They weren’t there. They ended up picking him up when he was dropping his daughter off at school.”
She recalled another instance where ICE showed up at a shelter, which had been listed as a registered address for an immigrant who no longer lived there. She did not share the locations of the shelters, in order to protect the security of the locations and the privacy of staff and clients.
“They definitely have been around shelters,” the spokesperson said. “Another shelter where ICE did go, ICE was looking for someone specific who no longer lived in the shelter, harassed people, you know, kind of got in their faces and was really disrespectful and threatening to them, but didn’t detain anybody because they didn’t find who they were looking for.”
Oregon may be a sanctuary state, but as the Trump administration revokes work permits, detains primary income-earners and targets immigrant families, more and more immigrants are facing evictions and homelessness.
“Oregon and Portland have done a lot to make things more accessible than they are in a lot of other states,” the spokesperson said. “But the bar is low.”
This article appears in April 1, 2026.