As the Trump administration forges ahead with its attacks on sanctuary cities and states, the City of Portland, Oregon is at the center of a growing battle over its last remaining immigration detention site: a 5,194-square-foot holding facility inside ICE’s Portland field office.

A community coalition, armed with more than 17,800 petition signatures, has for months pushed the city to revoke the conditional land use permit that allows ICE to operate the state’s only ICE facility, located at 4310 SW Macadam Avenue.

Last week, the city issued a land use violation notice against ICE over prolonged or overnight detentions that violated the conditions of the land use approval. “U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement made clear detention limitation commitments to our community, and we believe they broke those policies more than two dozen times,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement.

In July, Fox12 revealed that ICE repeatedly detained people for more than 24 hours, despite the permit stipulating that detainees cannot be held overnight or for more than 12 hours. Federal data showed that ICE had violated its permit at least 25 times, the city says.

In response to Next City’s request for comment, the ICE field office pointed to Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin’s written statement: “Mayor Wilson’s claims of substandard conditions at ICE facilities are categorically FALSE.” McLaughlin also stated, “ICE has taken action to ensure that detainees are not held for more than 12 hours, including by increasing staffing and other resources provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Advocates have long called for the permit, issued in 2011, to be pulled. In addition to alleged permit violations, they’ve cited public safety concerns for nearby residents — including children at the Cottonwood School next door, which moved in August over ICE’s use of chemical sprays against protestors, among other concerns.

But the new data changed the calculus for local lawmakers. “If we allow ICE to continue to operate when they have violated their permits, that means anything becomes permissible moving forward,” city councilor Angelita Morillo said in a July council meeting.

The permit fight and what comes next

With advocates calling on the city to shut down the Southwest Portland ICE facility for months, city administrators submitted a memo to the mayor over the summer outlining processes for any potential code violations, including noise violations and nuisance complaints.

On July 21, following the publication of data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by UCLA researchers, Portland Permitting and Development received a formal complaint alleging that ICE was violating the 12-hour detention limit. To proceed with such a complaint, the city would have to gain access to both the building and ICE records.

The violation notice prompts a process to determine whether the facility’s operation complies with the conditions of its land use permit. ICE has 30 days to correct the alleged violation; otherwise, the city can issue a fine or schedule a hearing to reconsider the approval. Following the results of the hearing, any member of the public would be able to request an appeal with Portland’s city council.

That lengthy process frustrates some on the city council. Councilor Sameer Kanal tells Next City he’d like to see the city pursue other strategies to curb ICE’s local presence, such as banning chemical munitions routinely used against protesters. “They are collective punishment,” he says. “And we could prohibit that.”

Still, for immigration advocates this latest development is a small victory. Susan Anglada Bartley, an original petitioner of revoking the land use permit, tells Next City that “the combination of direct action…the petition, the coalition around the petition, and the amazing work of frontliners…are all components of why the city had to finally admit that the facility is operating in violation of the permit.”

Closing sanctuary loopholes

There’s precedent for this kind of grassroots pressure in Oregon. In 2020, NORCOR, a regional jail in the City of The Dalles, ended its contract with ICE and stopped detaining individuals on civil immigration charges in the face of community opposition and lawsuits alleging violations of the state’s sanctuary law.

On the heels of that decision, Oregon updated its sanctuary state status and passed the Sanctuary Promise Act, banning private immigration detention facilities within the state.

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This distinction is important, experts explain. The Portland ICE facility’s building is owned by 4310 Building LLC, a shell company for developer Stuart Lindquist, incorporated by his attorneys at Kell, Alterman & Runstein. (Lindquist made headlines in 2018 after admitting to striking an anti-ICE protester with his car, telling media afterward that he was willing to fight protesters: “I’d be glad to take them on one at a time, bring ‘em on.”) Attorneys representing Lindquist did not respond to Next City’s inquiries.

For use of his building, ICE pays 4310 Building LLC roughly $2.45 million a year on a lease set to expire in 2033. Because ICE operates the site — rather than a private contractor — the facility has avoided running afoul of Oregon’s sanctuary law.

The controversial arrangement has left advocates questioning what it means for Oregon to be a sanctuary state if private individuals are allowed to profit from the surveillance, apprehension and detention of individuals undergoing a civil process.

“Oregon is a sanctuary state by name only,” Susan Anglada Bartley wrote in a message to Next City, “We’ve called out our city and state governments for complicity with ICE for many years. In order to approach being a sanctuary, complicity with ICE & GEO-Group must end!”

Local officials are working on strategies to reduce ICE’s power. Councilor Morillo’s office, for example, is currently developing policies to prevent private security forces from being used to detain immigrants; to reduce federal officials’ ability to use surveillance technology despite Portland’s strict rules on facial recognition and other surveillance technology; and to financially disincentivize landlords from leasing property to ICE or its contractors, due to the increased security and environmental cleanup costs that their operations incur on the city.

Despite local efforts in sanctuary cities and states, ICE’s operations are rapidly expanding nationally. A recent Washington Post investigation found that federal officials are looking to hire more than 10,000 new immigration officers and procure 300 new ICE offices across the country “as fast as possible.”

ICE has made about three times as many arrests between May and July as it did during the same period last year, per government figures obtained by the Deportation Data Project, though about half of detainees have no criminal record and are not facing criminal charges.

The consequences of closure

Meanwhile, some immigration advocates are conflicted about closing ICE’s Southwest Portland field office. The ACLU of Oregon has argued that its removal could make it harder for Oregon-based immigrants to access attorneys while detailed or to be released in the state.

That could lead to detainees being transported to ICE contractor GEO Group’s notorious detention center in Tacoma, Washington. The 1,575-bed facility has been the subject of multiple controversies — including the GEO Group paying a maximum of $1 a day to the detained migrants it had cleaning these facilities.

“If people are being held but can’t say where they are, or they’re being sent straight to Tacoma, that time [for lawyers] to respond and to get people out of detention is just gone,” Natalie Lerner, a board member at Portland Immigrants Rights Coalition, told Street Roots.

But immigration lawyers say release is rare regardless of where a person is detained.

Shizuko Hashimoto, a partner at Immigrant Law Group LLC, says that in her 10 years of experience, once a person is detained on civil immigration charges it is next to impossible to get them out, especially lately.

“I don’t think anybody has been successful at advocating for somebody who [ICE] detained actually being released,” says Shizuko Hashimoto, a partner at Immigrant Law Group LLC.

She describes a common practice under the Trump administration where attorneys from the Department of Homeland Security submit a motion to dismiss the deportation proceedings, only for individuals to find ICE waiting outside the courtroom to deport them through the administration’s expedited removal process.

Legal scholars stress how unusual the U.S. approach is. “There is no similar circumstance where we put people in a carceral space for a civil violation,” says Juliet Stumpf, chair of Lewis and Clark Law School and an expert on immigration law.

For Councilor Kanal, the fight underscores the need to codify Portland’s sanctuary city status and bring transparency to ICE operations in the city. Still, he recognizes the limitations of what local governments can do under Trump’s administration.

“We as Portlanders can’t solve ICE alone,” he says.

This post was originally published on Next City.