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The Trump administration sharply increased immigration arrests in June - part of its promise of mass deportations - but it's having trouble keeping up the pace. New statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, show arrests dipped again in July, roughly 13% month to month. The government has cited its need for more officers and detention places, but local resistance to arrests and deportations may also play a role. At least, that's the hope of activists. NPR's Martin Kaste reports on the situation in Oregon.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAFFIC NOISE)
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: It's midnight outside the ICE building in Portland, and young protesters are tiptoeing up to a line in the driveway that marks the edge of federal property. Sometimes they hop over it, going back and forth. One's holding a bubble machine.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #1: Dangerous antifa with the bubbles.
KASTE: Tonight, this provokes only a brief appearance at the main gate of masked federal officers, and their warnings are mocked by the masked protesters.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #2: They said, get off the driveway. This is federal property.
KASTE: But on other nights, the protests have earned a bigger response. Michael Green (ph) often comes down here to watch the action, and he recalls what federal officers did just a few nights ago.
MICHAEL GREEN: They came out of every side gate - every kind of gas, sandbags, the pepper balls. All the way down the block, it was just chaos.
KASTE: This has been going on now for two months. The air here carries a residual tang of pepper spray. The ICE building itself is a plywood bunker, every lower window boarded up and covered with spray-painted curses.
CHANDLER PATEY: See, without us here, people would just forget, right? It would just make it so that people are able to stop thinking about it.
KASTE: Chandler Patey is one of the few protesters who's not masked. He says he's been detained twice, so the Feds have his name anyway.
PATEY: We need to be here, and we need to create some amount of noise and have a presence here. In having a presence here, we force ICE to also be here. And when ICE is here, they're not out kidnapping people, right?
KASTE: But the reality is this building still functions. People with immigration cases come here for check-ins and the government cars come and go, though often escorted down the driveway by armed officers. Meanwhile, the protests have antagonized some of the neighbors, one of whom is suing the city for not enforcing its noise ordinances.
The White House border czar, Tom Homan, has said more than once this summer that he's headed to Portland to check things out - a prospect the protesters relish. But so far, he hasn't given them that satisfaction.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hotline.
KASTE: Phone calls like this one may be more of an impediment to mass deportation in Oregon.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I just got word that there's ICE activity in Woodburn.
KASTE: This is a hotline run by the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition. The idea is to get early warning of immigration enforcement actions, spread the word and quickly line up legal help.
ISA PENA: It's a matter of hours - often very few hours.
KASTE: Isa Pena is with one of the groups involved with the hotline - Innovation Law Lab. She says one strategy when they get word of an arrest is to file a habeas corpus petition before ICE can transport someone across the state line to Washington, where the nearest overnight detention center is.
PENA: If we are able to file a habeas petition in Oregon, we have gotten orders from the judge that the individual cannot be removed out of the state. And because ICE does not have any detention facilities, they are often let go.
KASTE: The fact that ICE doesn't have an overnight detention center in Oregon is a practical impediment to immigration arrests here, which lag behind neighboring states. Another factor is the statewide sanctuary law, which limits cooperation by local police and jails with ICE. The state also helps to fund some of the legal aid for people who are detained.
ICE wouldn't respond to NPR's requests for comment on this story. But earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was on Fox News, criticizing the actions of sanctuary jurisdictions.
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KRISTI NOEM: These individuals that are in our country undocumented - they're breaking our laws. And that what I find - is what I find so astounding by so many of these leaders in these sanctuary cities and in these sanctuary states, is that they're willingly encouraging and protecting people who break our laws.
KASTE: In response to this kind of criticism, Isa Pena says she doesn't think the hotline system is making it harder for ICE to do its job. Instead, she says, they're just asking ICE to, quote, "do their job correctly."
Martin Kaste, NPR News, Portland, Oregon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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