PORTLAND — A jail in north-central Oregon has been sued by four people who contend the facility is violating its state law by holding immigrants who are awaiting status hearings or deportation.
The four assert in a lawsuit filed Friday in northern Wasco County that they have paid and continue to pay property taxes used to build and operate the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility in the small city of The Dalles. They alleged the jail is breaking a unique Oregon law prohibiting state and local authorities from helping federal authorities enforce immigration laws.
Oregon created America’s first sanctuary state in 1987. In February, Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order that said all state agencies must follow the 1987 statute.
In addition to the jail, the suit names Wasco County. Its attorney, Kristen Campbell, said the county and the jail have complied with Oregon law.
The jail generally referred to as NORCOR opened as a regional jail for four rural counties. As with many other local jails, it has a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to provide beds for federal detainees.
The focus of the lawsuit is the immigrants overflowing to Wasco County from an U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma.
The relationship between the jail and the federal agency gained attention in May when several detainees went on a hunger strike that ended when they won access to a microwave oven and a radio.
Pro-immigrant activists from that dispute and the four plaintiffs in the lawsuit cite the 1987 Oregon law that prohibits the use of public “moneys, equipment or personnel for the purpose of detecting or apprehending persons whose only violation of law is that they are persons of foreign citizenship present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws.”
But Campbell, the county attorney, said NORCOR only takes inmates that have been charged with a crime beyond being immigrants in the country illegally.
