This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
A group of pilots stood at the Newport airport Sunday holding signs in the rain and behind them, looming in large bold-face letters were the words “No ICE” painted across a hangar for Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden to see.
Just a day before, Dave Koester, who has a private hangar at the airport, rallied a group of fellow pilots to scrawl the message on the building opposing the possibility of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security creating an immigration detention center at the Coast Guard air base just three hangars away.
“We want to show that this can’t just happen here,” Koestar told the Lincoln Chronicle. “Courageousness is contagious and we want to be visible.”
Koester said the pilots wanted to express a unified, peaceful message not aimed at government workers but at policies they believe to be harmful and incompatible with the small coastal town of Newport.
Wyden held a meeting and news conference Sunday at the airport and then moved to a town hall that capped a chaotic two-weeks for the city, drawing TV news crews and even the New York Times to what is usually a quiet, blue collar coastal city.
Some 2½ weeks ago a Texas company that builds housing for troops at the U.S.- Mexico border expressed interest in leasing city-owned land at the airport for a federal project, setting off alarms that an immigration detention center may be planned for Newport. The company has since withdrawn their letter of interest to the city but job listings for detention nurses and other medical staff have continued to surface with Newport listed as the location.
On Friday, the Newport Fisherman’s Wives and Lincoln County filed suit in U.S. District Court to attempt to force the return of a Coast Guard helicopter that was moved to North Bend last month amid the possible plans for the detention facility. On Monday, the state of Oregon is expected to file its own federal lawsuit to get the rescue helicopter returned to Newport – or at least find out why it was moved 90 miles away to North Bend.
City, state and federal officials say they still have not been able to get sufficient answers or confirmation about what is happening. On Sunday they finally connected with a U.S. Coast Guard official, but felt answers to their questions fell flat.
On Sunday morning, Wyden met with San Francisco-based Coast Guard representative Matt Edes, along with Newport Fishermen’s Wives and Siletz tribal members, Newport city councilors, and county Commissioner Walter Chuck.
Edes said the helicopter was moved to North Bend because of staffing but had no answers why the Newport community, Siletz tribe or local officials were not notified as required, according to several elected officials who attended the meeting.
Despite its move to North Bend, the Coast Guard representative also said that response times would not change and would still fall within a two-hour window required by its regulations.
“His answers felt way way way short,” Wyden said at a press conference following the meeting. “I’m here on the ground because I want to know what’s going to happen in the air and the sea if there is a rescue needed in this (upcoming Dungeness crab) season.”
“I’m glad that the Coast Guard met with us this morning but for all the moms and kids and families for whom this is a life and death situation, our delegation is going to stay at it until we get some real answers,” he said.
Showing up
Questions swirling around the fate of the Coast Guard helicopter and the ICE facility that may take its place dominated Wyden’s town hall later Sunday attended by 600 people at Newport High School.
The 90-minute event was bookended by a speech from Abril Aldama, the Newport teenager who captivated a crowd of over 800 people at a Newport city council meeting 10 days ago where she spoke about her father being swept up Sept. 17 by immigration agents while on his way to work.
Nearly all the questions to Wyden and comments from audience members had to do with the potential ICE facility or the Coast Guard’s relocated helicopter. The six-term senator opened the 1,238th town hall of his career with a question.
“How many of you want your Coast Guard Helicopter back?” he asked.
The audience roared, clapped and pounded bleachers for several seconds.
Alan Roberts drove to the town hall from Springfield and wore a small flag attached to his hat that read “No ICE in Newport."
“I don’t want there to be an Orca Alcatraz here,” Roberts said, referencing the detention center named “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida.
Roberts said you don’t have to live in Newport to be concerned about the possible detention center because its impacts are far reaching. The missing Coast Guard helicopter is a concern he shares as well, because he charters a fishing boat and feels uneasy being in the water knowing the helicopter is no longer stationed locally, he told the Chronicle.
Lisa Ballance, interim director of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, expressed her concern over the safety of students who conduct marine research.
“Hundreds of students are on the water every year,” Ballance told the crowd, “The loss of a Newport based helicopter will significantly risk our marine operations. We absolutely need a U.S.Coast Guard helicopter based in Newport.”
Tom Rafalski of Yachats, a doctor at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport, said he has resuscitated patients whose boats have capsized in coastal waters and delivered to the emergency room by the Newport-based helicopter.
The body can only really handle about 20 minutes in the frigid ocean water before things get deadly, he told the Chronicle.
“Typically, patients go into cardiac arrest,” he said. “Every minute counts.”
Some patients are able to be warmed up and their hearts willed to work again, Rafalski said, but the longer they spend in the water, the less likely they are to survive. Not having a locally stationed helicopter further impacts that survivability, he said.
Taunette Dixon, a Fishermen’s Wives leader who has led the group’s opposition to the helicopter’s move, also relayed her concerns over safety.
“We had no communication prior to this. We have no current communication,” said Dixon. “So our only resources right now are the courts.”
The helicopter isn’t just for the safety of fishermen, but all mariners, surfers, loggers and tourists, Dixon said. They hope the injunction request filed with the lawsuit Friday results in the helicopter’s return before the dangerous crabbing season begins in mid-December, she told the crowd.
“This helicopter is for our whole community, and it reaches 100 miles wide, so really this is an essential thing that we need in our community to save lives,” Dixon said, “It’s not about party lines for us, it is about saving lives.”
