For months, protesters and residents near the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility have been repeatedly subjected to a chemical haze from tear gas used by federal agents.
The Portland City Council has tried to intervene by passing a detention center fee ordinance in December 2025. It was intended to address public nuisance impacts associated with detention facilities—particularly those that draw protests—by effectively putting a cost on contamination and health hazards from tear gas and other munitions law enforcement deploys on protesters.
The new ordinance is among the most effective tools the city currently has for accountability for federal agents’ actions at the ICE facility, but the city can’t enforce it just yet. It still needs to go through a formal rulemaking process to establish the fee structure and implementation.
Now, councilors worry that the city’s administrative branch may be moving hastily in response to their requests for quicker action to get the new code implemented. They say without a solid, permanent fee structure and rules around how the city enforces the code, it won’t serve its intended purpose. Even temporary rules could set the city up to fail in court if it faced a legal challenge.
City Councilors Angelita Morillo (D3) and Mitch Green (D4) sent a joint letter to Mayor Keith Wilson and City Administrator Raymond Lee on February 26 urging the administration to implement strong rules undergirding the new city law.
Even though the ordinance was added to city code, the city hasn’t been able to issue penalties or fees because the fine details have yet to be ironed out on the city’s administrative side. Making new rules to conform with city code typically includes input from staff to make it legally sound. The city administrator could add a less sturdy temporary rule, but that could make the law legally vulnerable.
Now, Morillo and Green want to ensure that the rules are strong enough to pass legal muster, and are doubling down on demands that the administration implement an enforcement process that does what the law intended.
“Labor and immigrant rights groups across this city have seized on this policy as a central demand because it proves that our local government can push back against harms inflicted on our community,” the letter said.
The letter was co-signed by 16 local labor and environmental organizations, as well as the Cottonwood School, which was forced to move last year due to federal agents’ violence.
“While we recognize that the City has limited authority to constrain the federal government, we refuse to accept that as a reason not to use the power we do have,” the letter said.
Wilson’s office did not immediately respond to the Mercury’s request for comment.
Thursday’s letter comes on the heels of a letter Morillo and Green sent in January asking the mayor to act quickly to write and enforce the rules. They say the mayor can, and should, operate swiftly and effectively in the interest of Portlanders.
Currently, the detention center fee would predominantly impact the sole ICE facility in Portland, but it could also deter property owners who allow properties to be used as a detention facility in the future.
The nuisance provisions outlined in the city code state that a detention facility’s landlord cannot cause, allow, or fail to prevent chemical agents beyond the building’s premises, contaminate neighboring structures, or threaten public health. If a tenant violates the law, the city will investigate and potentially fine the landlord.
Morillo and Green’s letter asserted that those nuisance provisions are the most important and sensitive pieces of the law. They argued the city needs strong rules dictating how the city responds to violations, and how enforcement works—including what dollar amounts are attached to violations.
How the rules are written could also determine how well the policy will hold up in court if the law is challenged. Without a record of how and why staffers from multiple city bureaus, county departments, and state agencies decided to structure the rules, a lawsuit could tank the law altogether for being arbitrary. That’s what Morillo, Green and a chorus of supporters want to avoid.
Instead, the councilors’ letter argued for a fee scale that represents community members’ experiences when they are harmed, technical and scientific expertise on public health and environmental impacts of those harms, and a plan for how city staff conduct investigations.
“When rules are grounded in documented harms, informed by experts, and shaped by community experience, they are far more likely to work as intended and withstand scrutiny,” the letter said.
Portland Jobs with Justice, a local labor coalition of more than 100 member organizations, signed onto the letter because the facility has been the source of pain in the neighborhood. Tyler Fellini, Portland Jobs with Justice executive director, noted federal agents tear gassed a peaceful labor march on January 31, including many attendees and their children.
“We think that every worker should have a right to work, harassment free in their workplaces,” Fellini said. “And we see ICE as a really antagonizing agent in the community.”
Fellini said the January rally appeared to be a turning point for many in the local labor movement, as some members who were previously less engaged in the streets found themselves on the other side of federal agents in a way they did not anticipate.
“That has woken up labor in a really powerful way,” Fellini said.
Fellini said it seems whatever Portlanders do, the city is likely to remain in the crosshairs due to the consistency with which Portlanders have protested and spoken out against injustice.
“That’s a legacy to be proud of and to honor with action, not to cower and try to avoid federal scrutiny,” Fellini said. “I wish that the mayor was more comfortable embracing those ethos of Portlanders.”
The way authoritarianism is defeated, Fellini said, is “death by 1,000 cuts.” He said he hopes the letter urges the mayor to consider how his inaction may help the federal government get away with policies that harm people at risk of deportation.
“The more you can slow down this machine, the more you can disrupt deportations,” Fellini said. “And people are literally dying when they get deported. So, it’s not hyperbole to say that people’s lives are at stake here.”
Signatories include: The Cottonwood School, Sierra Club Oregon Chapter, 1000 Friends of Oregon, Sunrise Movement PDX, Breach Collective, Braided River Campaign, 350PDX, Oregon for Human Rights, Portland Jobs with Justice, Oregon Working Families Party, Federal Unionists Network PDX, Northwest Workers’ Justice Project, Union of United Staff Affiliated with Teamsters Local 223, City of Portland Professional Workers Union, Communications Workers of America Local 7901, Portland Democratic Socialists of America.
