With no room in Tacoma, ICE aims to take space from other communities | Opinion
In Newport, Ore., residents expressed outraged over the removal of a US Coast Guard rescue helicopter from their community. For a fishing and tourism town, saving lives at sea has a high value.
Adding insult to injury for many, the residents of Newport have reason to believe change is part of a larger effort to make space for a new immigrant detention center on federally held land in their city.
So why am I talking about this up in Tacoma? Believe it or not, this situation can be traced back to decisions made in this city during the first Trump administration.
After permitting the construction of the Northwest Immigrant Detention Center on its Tideflats in the early 2000s, Tacoma had second thoughts. As the nation’s immigration policies have become more chaotic, cruel and openly racist, residents and the local government looked for ways to get out of the immigration detention business.
They were unable to force the closure of the facility, which is privately run by the GEO Group. The city had to go to court and work with the state legislature to change land-use law, but it eventually made sure that ICE and GEO Group couldn’t expand the Tacoma facility to hold more people. Tacoma’s detention center, now rebranded as the Northwest ICE Processing Center, can’t house an influx of detainees.
But what Tacoma did was only the first step. It was the first region to say no more. (Its efforts also served as a warning to other localities about how hard it can be to get ICE detention out of a community after initially saying yes.) Now, the fight over detention facilities has spread throughout the region.
These days, ICE wants more than ever to expand its ability to detain immigrants. Tacoma and Washington state have both made this hard for them, but not impossible. Now more places are echoing Tacoma’s no. This newspaper has reported that other local communities are turning down ICE’s queries into whether they can use their jail space to hold detainees.
The federal government appears willing to take it a step further, by taking things away from communities to make room for detention centers. Which brings us to Newport.
While there hasn’t been any public confirmation from the federal government that the helicopter’s departure was related to a possible ICE facility, a confluence of events raised concerns that they were.
According to public statements from Newport city manager Nina Vetter at a special meeting of the city council, the Coast Guard helicopter was recently moved to North Bend, Ore. That’s about 90 miles as the helicopter flies from Newport. The helicopter had been positioned on a section of the airport that was deeded to the federal government in 1992.
Around the same time, an organization called Team Housing Solutions put forward a letter of intent to lease land at the Newport Municipal Airport in support of “federal operations.” Reports of job listings from a federal contractor that included detention-related roles in Newport further fueled concerns there would be an ICE facility coming to the city. City officials then said they were made aware that the airport was on a list of locations the Department of Homeland Security was considering for an ICE detention center.
A judge has since ordered the helicopter returned to Newport. The Oregon Attorney General and an advocacy group called the Newport Fishermen’s Wives filed lawsuits to keep it there, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon announced on Dec. 4 that the Coast Guard told him the helicopter was back for good. Team Housing Solutions has also withdrawn its proposal to lease the land, according to Vetter. But residents aren’t content that the matter is resolved, and the sting of the helicopter’s removal is likely to remain.
Residents still remember the last time this happened, when the Coast Guard under the Obama administration tried to move the helicopter in 2014 in the name of budget cuts. Community members in Newport successfully fought to keep it at their municipal airport.
I watched the video of the special meeting of the Newport City Council, where community members spoke up about the helicopter and the detention center that could take its place. Among them speakers who introduced themselves as a Navy veteran and a maritime worker, as well as members of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives, and they spoke about the lethal risk created by moving the helicopter away.
The common feeling I sensed behind their remarks was this: people are insulted.
Insulted that the federal government has again tried to remove one of the region’s most powerful resources for saving their loved ones’ lives in an emergency. And, as the maritime worker pointed out, that the government appeared to remove it for the sake of a federal agency and policy that is trampling people’s rights.
City council members there have vowed to fight the creation of a detention center at its airport. I imagine they’ll face steep obstacles if the federal government holds the deed to the land in question.
They might need a completely different legal strategy than what ended up containing, if not stopping, ICE detention in Tacoma. But if they want lessons on how land-use laws could help, they should give us a call.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon announced on Dec. 4 that the US Coast has told him the helicopter is back in Newport, Ore., to stay. The update also adds context about a previous attempt by the Coast Guard to move the helicopter to North Bend, Ore., in 2014.
This story was originally published December 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
