Hundreds of community members showed up Wednesday evening for a special meeting of the Newport City Council to offer public comment on the potential new ICE facility to be located at the Newport Municipal Airport.
Protestors began showing up as early as 4 p.m. outside, and a large presence began to develop around 5 p.m. The council chambers were completely filled with concerned citizens. Many more waited outside the chambers in the City Hall hallway to listen to a livestream, and even more citizens gathered and watched a livestream of the meeting a block away at the Newport Recreational Center.
Gabrielle McEntee, one of the owners of Mo’s Seafood and Chowder, said the news left her shocked and dismayed.
“We live in a peaceful place,” she said “Our community comes together when there are people in need. This is just so inappropriate.”
McEntee expressed concern about the apparent relocation of a Coast Guard helicopter–which some locals refer to as a “helo”--to North Bend, as part of the potential changes in Newport.
“My family comes from the fishing world and we need that helo in Newport,” McEntee testified at the council meeting. “People should feel safe in our town regardless, and we need the helo back.”
The meeting was opened by an establishment of confirmed facts by City Manager Nina Vetter, who shared with the audience what the council knows:
- At the Newport Municipal Airport, there is a piece of property that was deeded to the federal government in 1992. This piece of property is the location of the Newport Coast Guard Air Facility.
- The city of Newport has received confirmation that the rescue helicopter that was stationed at the Newport Coast Guard facility was relocated to the Coast Guard facility in North Bend, and it has not been confirmed whether this move is temporary or permanent.
- The city was contacted by a third party named Team Housing Solutions Inc with a letter of intent to lease 4 acres of the city’s property at the Municipal Airport to “support federal operations”. Vetter said the city received notice on Wednesday that Team Housing Solutions is withdrawing their letter of intent, though it’s unclear what that means for the overall project.
- At this time no proposal nor any communication has been sent or submitted to the city of Newport directly from the Department of Homeland Security.
- City of Newport officials were made aware of information that the DHS is in a process of evaluating locations along the Oregon Coast for a potential US ICE facility and Newport Municipal Airport has been identified as a possible location for this facility.
Newport Mayor Jan Kaplan began the meeting by addressing those in attendance: “Speaking for the council, we are going to do everything we can to fight this.”
Kaplan’s statement received applause from the crowd both inside and outside the chambers. The floor was then opened for public comment, which went for two hours.
There were two main themes throughout the public comment session: that the community adamantly does not want an ICE facility established on the central Oregon Coast, and anger over the moving of the local Coast Guard helicopter to North Bend in advance of the Dungeness crab fishery opener on Dec. 1.
The Coast Guard helicopter was moved without community input, a move that has triggered memories of a fight 11 years ago to keep the helicopter in Newport in the face of budget cuts. According to council members, it appears that the helicopter was moved to make room for the new ICE facility.
Cari Brandberg, the treasurer of the local organization Newport Fishermen’s Wives, did not mince words in expressing concern over the relocation of the helicopter: “We aren’t saying people might die–we’re saying people will die.”
The Dungeness crab fishery is Oregon’s most dangerous commercial fishery. It is a derby style fishery that opens in the winter, and with economic drivers colliding with dangerous storms, the risk of injury or death for crab fishermen is ever present every winter.
“We know job postings have been placed online, for detention officers, to drive buses, and for medical personnel, all those jobs to be created at the Newport Airport,” said State Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis. “And taking in total what this suggests to us is there is a plan somewhere to build a large-scale detention facility right here. If that is indeed the case then what that means is that someone, somewhere believes that detaining lives is more important than saving lives.”
And while an ICE facility in Newport could potentially house detainees from across a large geographic area, some members of the community testified that federal agents are already conducting immigration enforcement operations in the area.
Abril Almada, 14, gave tearful testimony about how her father was detained by ICE and is now in a detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. She described the difficulty this has had on her family and her own mental health.
“I did not know what was going on,” she said. “No one deserves to go through what I’m going through and my family is going through. No one deserves to get picked up. My dad was my everything. My mom has been through a lot these past weeks without my dad. My grandma died a few weeks ago and my dad wasn’t here to comfort [my mom]. Everyone is going through a lot of trauma right now.”
Almada’s testimony prompted a response from Kaplan, the mayor: “I want to repeat that this council will do everything that we can do in support and to fight this.”
