Immigration enforcement may be less public than it was when last fall’s militant “Operation Black Rose” swept through the Portland area, but new data shows arrests are nonetheless surging again in the Pacific Northwest.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained immigrants in custody at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma since the facility's opening in 2004.
Stephani Gordon / OPB
June and July marked the two most active months for immigration arrests in both Oregon and Washington state since the autumn operation, when President Donald Trump tried to send the National Guard into Portland. The data, published by the Deportation Data Project this week, only includes a slice of August.
In Oregon, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officers apprehended 186 people in June and 174 people in July. Those numbers show an escalation from winter and spring. After arrests dwindled in January, officers arrested an average 54 people monthly between February and May.
Alyssa Walker Keller, co-executive director of Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition, which tracks its own immigration enforcement data with a self-reporting hotline, said her organization’s figures match the trend.
“Undeniably we’re seeing an increase,” Walker Keller said.
Washington’s numbers rose, too. Immigration enforcement officers detained about 705 people in June, then another 700 in July. They averaged about 342 arrests in the four months prior.
The two states’ trends align with a national upswell in immigration enforcement. An analysis of the same dataset by the New York Times shows the Department of Homeland Security made 43,000 arrests across the country in June and 49,000 in July.
The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation tactics last fall drew immense criticism for loudly putting armed officers into public places for high-profile takedowns. Those tactics seem to have shifted since Secretary Markwayne Mullin took over DHS this spring.
“We have made real progress blocking warrantless arrests and defending the constitutional rights of Oregonians,” said Isa Peña, a spokesperson with the immigrants’ rights group Innovation Law Lab. Still, the federal government is looking for new ways around due process in order to fuel Trump’s mass deportation machine.”
Immigrants’ rights groups told OPB immigration enforcement officers continue targeting people driving to or from work. Both Peña and Walker Keller said they’ve heard accounts of masked agents patrolling big box store parking lots recently.
Delivery drivers have also seen a noticeable presence in recent detentions, Walker Keller said.
“There’s not the same volume of agents with pepper spray or smashing windows — though we are seeing some of those tactics being used,” Walker Keller said.
While it’s a quieter form of immigration enforcement, Walker Keller said it’s nonetheless stoking fear in immigrant communities. Particularly with school beginning again, she said, families continue to be reluctant to leave the house.
In response to a request for comment, officials with DHS questioned the validity of the data, which the Deportation Data Project gets primarily through public records requests to DHS.
The project is a collaboration between multiple universities that obtain arrest data from DHS through public records requests and lawsuits. This latest release is their biggest update since April.
