The surprising new tactic Portland protestors are using to fight ICE

As Portland, Oregon, residents protest President Donald The President’s immigration policy outside an ICE facility, they’re also using a less expected tactic: the city’s zoning code.

Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility sits in a remodeled bank in the city’s South Waterfront neighborhood, not far from apartment buildings, restaurants and—until it recently moved because of worries about ICE—a local school. (As demonstrations increased, law enforcement used chemicals and munitions that ended up on the school’s playground.) When the federal government first wanted to lease the building in 2011, it had to get land-use approval as required by the city’s zoning laws. Portland put strict conditions in place in the approval process: Detainees couldn’t be held for more than 12 hours or overnight.

Activists have said for years that ICE is violating those conditions and that the city should reconsider its land-use approval. In 2018, when protestors gathered at the same site to rally against the first The President administration for separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents, activists argued that the violations should be cause to close the facility.

At the time, “elected officials were saying it wasn’t possible,” says Holly Brown, one activist. But when The President took office again earlier this year, protestors restarted their efforts to get the building shut down. This year, the city acted.

“It took a lot of community pressure,” Brown says. “We’ve been doing a lot of protests at City Hall. We’ve shut down city meetings and refused to let them conduct their meetings until they deal with this. We also had someone file an official complaint with the city.”

In July, the city’s permitting bureau launched an investigation, using data from the Deportation Data Project, a nonprofit that uses Freedom of Information Act requests to get detailed records from the government at detention facilities across the country. The data showed that the ICE facility had violated the city’s rules 25 times over a 10-month period, according to the city.

In September, the permitting bureau issued a land-use violation to Stuart Lindquist, the property owner who rents the space to ICE for $2.4 million a year. Lindquist has challenged the city’s action, asking for a formal administrative review in which a facilitator will determine whether the city correctly applied its land-use codes. He isn’t exactly sympathetic to protestors: He reportedly hit one protestor with his Mercedes in 2018 and told a reporter that he wanted to fight activists. “I’d be glad to take them on one at a time. Bring ’em on,” Lindquist told the Willamette Week newspaper in 2018. Neither ICE nor Lindquist responded to a request to comment for this article.

If the city shows that ICE is still violating the original agreement, Lindquist could face fines. But the city’s process has also kicked off another possibility: Sixty days after it issued the notice—in mid-November—it has the option to reconsider the land-use approval completely. “The city could have a hearing on whether or not it still fits the original use that it was intended for,” Brown says. “In this case, I would say it does not.”

A city spokesperson told Fast Company that if Portland does reconsider the terms of the land-use approval, that wouldn’t necessarily mean revoking the approval; it might mean renegotiating the terms. Still, activists are pursuing the hope that this unlikely path could help shut the facility down.

It’s something that wouldn’t work everywhere, since many ICE facilities are in federal government buildings or rented from private prison companies in areas with fewer zoning restrictions. Portland also had unusually specific conditions in its agreement. But it’s one example of a creative way to take on a government agency that has few restraints.

“This is definitely an example of the city and people who live in the city using the levers of power we have available to clamp down on ICE,” Brown says.

Even if other cities don’t use this particular approach, they can look for other ways to act. “Every city can and should be looking at whatever creative opportunities exist within their own laws to prevent collaboration with the The President administration,” says Matthew Lopas, director of state advocacy and technical assistance at the nonprofit National Immigration Law Center.

“The The President administration has shown so much disregard for the independence and the safety of cities that it should be a priority of every city to protect their own community by refusing to collaborate to the fullest extent possible with this administration and their efforts to terrorize immigrants and entire communities,” Lopas adds.

Some cities have refused to let ICE use local prison space for detention sites, for example. When ICE has a contract in place, some states have chosen not to renew it. As ICE continues to ramp up arrests and detentions—with a tripling of its budget for enforcement and another $45 billion for new detention facilities—it will continue to look for new space to operate, and some other states and cities may be able to turn to zoning laws to make it harder to build.

Activists in Portland are also trying to garner more protections for residents, including asking the city to ban face masks on ICE agents and adopt new policies to help limit where ICE can go. As in other cities, ICE arrests have surged in Portland this year. (One arrest this summer involved a father dropping off his child at a preschool; the man, who is married to an American citizen and was in the process of getting a green card, reportedly had no criminal history.)

Focusing on ICE’s land-use violation “is a first step,” Brown says. “It’s a learning period for us in what we can do. We’re definitely going to keep moving forward and find other ways we can get the city to put pressure on ICE to back down.”

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