Democrats Weaponize Portland’s Sprawling Bureaucracy To Undermine ICE

Portland officials are weaponizing their city’s uniquely onerous zoning laws in their bid to stop 🛂Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) crackdown against illegal migrant criminals.

Under pressure from protesters and liberal constituents, Portland leaders are using zoning laws to disrupt federal 🛂Immigration officials nestled within the high-rise South Waterfront district, according to the New York Times (NYT). The city sent a violation notice to the ICE building’s owner and may revoke the agency’s permit for the building altogether.

The local fight is brewing as the Trump administration expands its nationwide crackdown on other major sanctuary cities that have large illegal migrant populations.

“This is so Oregon of us, so Portland of us,” said Elana Pirtle-Guiney, president of the Portland City Council, according to the NYT, “to distill a huge federal policy issue that is also a moral issue that is also about the fundamental question of who we are as a country into a land-use problem.”

Oregon has some of the most expansive zoning laws in the country, and clashes between Portland leaders and ICE date back years before the first Trump administration.

When the agency began negotiations to rent a privately-owned building on the edge of South Waterfront, locals expressed concern over protests, armed officers and the possibility of dangerous criminals being released into the community, according to the NYT. The Portland City Council, anxious to fill vacant real estate spaces, compromised with ICE: the agency was allowed to add parking lot spaces and a detention center under the condition that individuals could not be detained longer than 12 hours or overnight.