Portland, OR – Since the start of December, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson was confronted twice by activists from the Revoke the ICE Permit campaign over his lack of any meaningful actions against ICE.
These have been part of an ongoing effort from the campaign and Portland Contra las Deportaciones (PDXCD) to secure a meeting with him and demand an action plan for shutting down the Portland ICE facility as soon as possible.
The first confrontation was on December 5, at a brewery in Southeast Portland. Keith Wilson attended a beer launch and was approached by Holly Brown of PDXCD. After she introduced herself, he immediately walked away and dismissed her as she asked what his office planned to do to protect the people of Portland from ICE. Wilson said, “We’re trying to celebrate,” to which Brown responded, “It’s hard to celebrate when people are being kidnapped off our streets.”
At least 467 people have been detained by ICE in northwest Oregon since the beginning of November, with the vast majority having been detained in the Portland metropolitan area.
Mayor Wilson had the owners of the brewery remove Brown from the building, as well as others who were there to ask why he was doing so little to fight back against ICE. “That’s enough,” he said, before turning away from his constituents. The owner of the brewery then called the cops on the activists for simply asking the mayor questions at a public event.
Later that night, the same activists were able to catch him coming out of the brewery and ask more questions. Brown asked the mayor, “We want the [ICE] facility to be shut down, we know that you have the ability to make executive orders, and you are also able to speak directly to Permitting & Development. So I would like to know, are you doing this? Are you working on that?” Portland Permitting & Development is the government department with the power to begin the process of revoking ICE’s conditional use permit; it is a department the mayor has control over. Wilson said, “We’ll talk about this later” and refused to provide information on whether he’d host a town hall or other event where people can directly ask him questions about ICE.
The second confrontation came on December 8, where Mayor Wilson was a guest speaker at a city event in Northeast Portland on the topic of public safety. He was asked pre-selected questions and, despite it being the largest threat to public safety in Portland, he was only asked one question about ICE. That question asked how the city planned to address the ICE facility. At the start of his response, he emphasized that Portland must focus on “peaceful protest” and “staying between the guardrails.” On the topic of the National Guard deployment that loomed over the city from late September into early November, the mayor proudly stated, “forces were sent and they were garrisoned outside our city, we didn’t react.”
In reality, Portland reacted with a fight when Trump announced the deployment of the National Guard, with PDXCD holding a militant protest in front of the ICE Facility the day after the announcement. Due to Portland’s resistance, the deployment was defeated.
Mayor Wilson wrapped up his response by saying “We will continue to do what we do, we will continue to work with the governor, we will continue to meet them in the court of law, and we will win”. In response to this, Cole Dunahugh of the Revoke the ICE Permit campaign stood up and demanded an explanation for why Permitting & Development has given the landlord for the Portland ICE facility, Stuart Lindquist, two extensions on the deadline for him to file an appeal to the notice of land use violation he was served on September 17.
“Why are you not doing every single thing in your power to get that permit revoked? ICE is abducting hundreds of people per month, and you are sitting there, doing nothing.”
In response, Wilson said, “That’s our laws, that’s our rules”. He claimed that the city was required to give him a 14-day extension, despite extensions being discretionary, and the fact that Portland city government gave him well over a month of extensions. When Dunahugh brought this up, he didn’t respond further. These extensions ran out on December 1. Wilson and Permitting & Development have shown no signs of moving forward with the permit reconsideration process.
So long as Mayor Wilson refuses to engage with the people of Portland, and so long as he refuses to take action to revoke ICE’s permit for their Portland facility, PDXCD and the Revoke the ICE Permit campaign are committed to being wherever he shows his face and demanding accountability.
#PortlandOR #OR #ImmigrantRights #PDXCD #ICE
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