A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official wrote in court filings Tuesday that the agency intended to build a temporary holding and processing center in Newport, Oregon, confirming rumors that have swirled through the coastal community for months.
The effort to build an ICE detention center was put on hold after community members raised concerns – and then sued to keep a U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopter in Newport, which court filings show was moved in the midst of ICE’s construction efforts.
FILE - The area behind the U.S. Coast Guard facility where the rescue helicopter is stored at the Newport Municipal Airport, near the area where Immigration and Customs Enforcement considered a facility in Newport, Ore., seen on Nov. 17, 2025.
Eli Imadali / OPB
But Lincoln County leaders say they believe the statement submitted by Ralph Ferguson, assistant director for ICE enforcement and removal operations, suggests ICE could restart its push for a Coastal Oregon detention center as soon as May.
“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,” Ferguson wrote in a statement submitted Tuesday to the U.S. District Court of Eugene.
Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to OPB’s request for a comment.
In his court declaration, Ferguson said that initial environmental reviews in Newport were underway to build a temporary ICE holding center, and said those reviews were put on hold when the Coast Guard withdrew its airport facilities from consideration.
That happened after U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken blocked efforts by the federal government to relocate Newport’s Coast Guard rescue helicopter. A helicopter has been based at Newport for more than 40 years and is used in rescue operations for the local fishing fleet, as well as recreational boaters and tourists. The law lays out a process for changing that deployment.
Coast Guard officials “did not understand the impact of that statute and, as such run afoul of it, it seems to me,” Aiken said at a hearing in December.
Although the Coast Guard argued the helicopter was only temporarily relocated, attorneys for Newport have argued it was moved to make space for a detention center.
Ferguson’s statement appears to confirm that theory. Work to prepare an ICE holding and processing facility was halted on Dec. 4 after the Coast Guard said the airport was no longer available. That’s the same day Lincoln County and the nonprofit Newport Fisherman’s Wives asked for an injunction preventing the Coast Guard from relocating the helicopter.
Later that month, Aiken issued a temporary injunction ordering the Guard to keep the helicopter based in Newport.
“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,” Ferguson continued in his statement.
The Lincoln Board of Commissioners issued a statement Wednesday raising concerns about what might happen after May 1.
“Lincoln County maintains that the rescue helicopter is and will remain a vital, life-saving asset for our fishing fleet, recreational boaters, and visitors, the latter of which begin to arrive in great numbers after May 1 each year,” the board said in a statement.
OPB asked ICE for a response to Lincoln County’s statement. The agency did not respond.
