Eugene’s police auditor says officers did not violate sanctuary law earlier this year when they helped several cars leave the downtown Federal Building during an anti-ICE protest.
The Eugene Police Department said it responded to a call for service on Jan. 20 after demonstrators began blocking the Federal Building’s gated parking lot and refused to move.
After several hours, EPD said officers were able to persuade the group to let cars through without any use of police force.
However, some protesters accused the department of helping immigration enforcement. They claimed one of the vehicles trying to leave was a black, unmarked car that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had previously used to transport a detainee out of the building.
Anna Lardner, a protester who was at the federal building on Jan. 20, said she recognized the car’s license plate from the earlier detainment.
She told KLCC she saw a masked person, who she believed was an ICE agent, enter the driver’s side on Jan. 20. The Eugene Federal Building houses an ICE field office.
“If that vehicle was engaged in any immigration related enforcement, if it was going to stake out a house at that time, if it was going to support another immigration enforcement operation, EPD facilitated that vehicle’s departure from the building in a way that enabled that ICE agent to continue to do the work,” Lardner said during a Jan. 21 interview.
Eugene’s Independent Police Auditor, Craig Renetzky, said his office investigated the incident. He told KLCC they found no evidence that any immigration enforcement was occurring when EPD became involved.
He said it appeared instead that these were federal employees attempting to leave at the end of a work day. He said sanctuary law does not exempt Eugene police from performing their public duties.
“Temporarily clearing a driveway for these workers to leave the facility in the vehicles to go home does not qualify as assisting in immigration enforcement activities, and therefore, EPD actions were allowable under the Sanctuary Promise act,” said Renetzky.
Renetzky said his office didn’t look into the history of the vehicles, as that is not part of the criteria for a violation of sanctuary law.
“It could have been a pool vehicle. It could have been anything,” said Renetzky. “But we needed to find something to show that it was actually being used at that time for immigration, and we did not.”
Eugene’s independent police auditor has opened multiple investigations into EPD’s compliance with sanctuary law since the start of the second Trump administration.
Most recently, the auditor cleared the department of wrongdoing after police declared a riot during a protest at the federal building on Jan. 30.
