Weekly Update for February 15, 2026

• 4 detentions reported to the PIRC hotline 2/9-2/15, with detentions occurring in Multnomah and Clackamas counties

• Half of the 14 detentions reported to PIRC this month have been during check ins at the ICE processing center at Macadam

Thanks to the incredible 40+ years of immigrant rights organizing in Oregon, Oregon does not currently have ICE detention centers. Attempts to hold people at Sheridan, NORCOR and other facilities have ultimately failed due to a combination of powerful community organizing and policy changes that limit ICE’s ability to hold Oregonians in detention for immigration related charges. 

ICE hates this, because it limits their capacity to hold our neighbors in for-profit detention, and they are looking for a way around it.

As rumors swirled through Newport and coastal communities in the fall, ICE confirmed at the end of January in sworn testimony that they had intended to open a “holding center”

According to a statement in court filings  by assistant director Ralph Ferguson,

“ICE had begun environmental compliance activities necessary to allow the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Air Facility at Newport, Oregon, to be utilized by ICE-ERO [Enforcement and Removals Operations] as a proposed temporary holding/processing facility…ICE has no plan or intention to begin construction or open an ICE facility in the City of Newport or at Newport Municipal between now and until May 1, 2026,”

With more than a thousand Oregonians in detention facilities across the country since the fall, added bed capacity on the coast would allow more detentions…and more money for the companies like GEO that profit off of ICE paying for detention beds for all these Oregonians. It would also make it much easier/more cost effective for ICE to transfer our neighbors to dententions all over the country directly from Oregon, which they do to make it incredibly difficult to provide access to legal counsel and due process. In some jurisdictions where Oregonians are transferred, there is virtually a 100% deportation rate regardless of the circumstances of their legal status.

This rapid detention to deportation pipeline is the death of due process. Does this story seem familiar?

February 19th marks the “Day of Rememberance”; the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that led to the imprisonment of 125,000+ Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Currently ~ 70,000 people are in immigration detention centers around the country. This includes families with children, unaccompanied youth, and 74% have no history of criminal convictions.

One day, we will remember how this nation repeated a lesson we didn’t learn 80 years ago. We all can make choices, with our dollars, voices and time that resist against the for profit prison system, and ensure that NO holding centers be built in any Oregonian community.