A U.S. Coast Guard facility at the Newport Municipal Airport has been at the center of speculation the Trump administration is planning a new immigrant detention facility in Oregon.
Eli Imadali / OPB
Attorneys for the state of Oregon are asking a federal judge to block construction of an immigrant detention center in Newport, arguing the Trump administration has not gone through the proper channels to do so.
In an updated complaint filed Friday as part of an ongoing lawsuit, the Oregon Department of Justice says evidence suggests that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been sneakily crafting plans to construct a facility that could house hundreds of immigrant detainees.
But the agency argues that ICE has not satisfied necessary criteria before taking such a step. Those include publishing an environmental impact statement laying out the possible fallout of a mass detention facility on the coast, and seeking an analysis from the state of Oregon about how such a facility jibes with land use laws.
Related: US Coast Guard likely ‘ran afoul’ of law by removing rescue helicopter from Newport, judge says
The filing asks U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken to block the construction of any detention center until those requirements are fulfilled.
“Defendants have been furtively working to transform the Newport Municipal Airport into an ICE detention facility,” the new filing reads. “Defendants have engaged in these efforts behind closed doors, with no transparency or public process, ignoring direct requests for information from local officials and members of Congress.”
The updated complaint contains few details that aren’t already known.
Since early November, a mounting body of evidence has suggested ICE was planning a detention center in Newport, and hoped to use the coastal city’s airport to fly detainees out of state.
As OPB and other outlets have reported, federal contractors have inquired about leasing land at the airport, trucking thousands of gallons of sewage away from the airport, and renting blocks of hotel rooms on the central coast for months or years at a time. Two federal contractors have posted jobs for detention officers and medical personnel based in Newport that appear keyed to an ICE facility. Many of those posts have since been removed.
In a sworn deposition, a senior U.S. Coast Guard official told attorneys this month that there had been preliminary discussions about housing an ICE facility at a Coast Guard air base located at the Newport airport, but that those plans had not moved forward.
Related: With ICE (maybe) waiting in the wings, Newport sits in limbo
Neither ICE nor its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, has offered any clarity on what might be in the works. Local, state and federal officials all say they’ve been met with silence when they ask for details.
Friday’s filing is the first time a judge has been asked to weigh in on the specific matter of a potential detention facility, though it’s not clear when Aiken might do so. The judge has already ordered the Coast Guard to return a rescue helicopter to the Newport airport, after the agency relocated the aircraft in late October.
“This is our opportunity to finally force an honest conversation,” said state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, who represents Newport. “We have collected evidence and watched the situation evolve. Now we have an opportunity to do something.”
