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.
This agreement has become a major vulnerability for the agency, as outside observers tracking who enters and exits the building have allegedly noted 25 instances over a 10-month period in which ICE detained people too long, according to the land-use notice issued to the agency’s landlord in September.
The property owner, who is currently contesting some of the evidence in the purported violation, now faces monthly fines of roughly $1,000 until the issue is addressed, according to the NYT. Later in October, city regulators are scheduled to reconsider the agency’s conditional-use permit for the building. The issue could land before the City Council, where members have been outspoken against ICE enforcement efforts.
The Trump administration has repeatedly clashed with Portland and Oregon officials. The Department of Justice includes both jurisdictions on its running list of sanctuary havens that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials, and federal prosecutors sued several Oregon counties earlier in October for allegedly refusing to comply with subpoenas from immigration investigators.
In October, the Trump administration deployed National Guard members to Portland in response to violent anti-ICE rioters. In reaction to the deployment, the Portland City Council unanimously passed a resolution intended to hamper federal immigration enforcement efforts by encouraging legal action against federal agents accused of “criminal use of force.”
“Portland is a great example of the mayor choosing to play politics instead of keeping his citizens safe,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said during a Monday press conference in Florida while speaking about sanctuary city leaders purportedly making ICE’s job more difficult.
When Noem visited Portland earlier this month and requested local law enforcement fence off a one-block radius around the ICE building, Mayor Keith Wilson, a Democrat, refused and ordered police tape around the ICE facility to come down.
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