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News
Street Roots • May 12-18, 2017
ICE-y conditions
Oregonians take pride in the state’s “sanctuary”posture,
but immigrant detainees from ICE are being held in
county jails on a daily basis - for money. A movement in
Oregon and elsewhere is pushing to get them out.
BY JOANNE ZUHL
S TA FF W R IT E R
n a sunny Saturday in early May,
Ramon Ramirez stands outside The
Dalles’ Northern Oregon Regional
Correctional Center, or NORCOR,
protesting in solidarity with the immigrant
detainees incarcerated inside.
But for a moment, his eyes are on the
sunlit hills that frame this breezy
agricultural community.
“You see all those trees? Those are
cherry trees,” Ramirez said. “Right now
those growers don’t have anybody to pick
those trees, and they’re going to need
picking soon.”
Ramirez is the president of the
farmworkers union PCUN - Pineros y
Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste. The anti
immigrant policies emanating from the
Trump administration, followed by
ag g ressive tactics ta k e n by U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is
keeping workers away from Oregon’s
lucrative fields, he said.
“ICE is not going after the criminals,”
Ramirez said. “They’re going after the
farmworkers.”
The contrast between the immigrant role
in the local community and what’s
happening at NORCOR weighs heavy on
Ramirez.
A few hundred yards away, inside the
windowless NORCOR facility, five detainees
of ICE recently staged a hunger strike
protesting their conditions. They had been
transferred to NORCOR from the Northwest
Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., and
there is speculation at least one was moved
to break up the hunger strike in Tacoma.
There, for several weeks in April, an
estimated 750 detainees held a hunger
strike to raise awareness of the treatment of
ICE prisoners. The strike has since been
suspended, there and at NORCOR, but the
community outrage at the facility’s cozy
relationship with ICE and the incarceration
of immigrants continues.
At NORCOR, Ramirez is part of a
coordinated opposition to the jail’s
relationship with ICE. The opposition is led
by Gorge ICE Resistance, a coalition of
organizations in the Columbia River Gorge
that has formed to support the NORCOR
hunger strikers, including Gorge Ecumenical
Ministries, Somos Uno, Hood River Latino
Network, Mid-Columbia Community Action
Network, Gorge ReSisters, Community
Action Network, Grassroots IMPACT and
Protect Oregon’s Progress.
On May 6, they held a rally to protest the
jail. They’ve held a presence there every
evening since the start of May.
They are joined by the Rural Organizing
O
PHO TO S BY JO A N N E ZU H L
Above, members o f Gorge IC E Resistance and other organizations demonstrate outside the
NORCOR ja il in The Dalles on May 6 in solidarity with detainees inside awaiting
deportation, and to call fo r an end to NO RCO R’s contract with U.S. Imm igration and
Customs Enforcement to incarcerate detainees in the jail. The protestors have had a presence
there every evening since the start o f May. Left, Ram on Ramirez with PCUN, the farmworkers
union.
Project, which works with a network of
grassroots organization across the state.
The ACLU of Oregon is also involved,
coming to the jail and talking with the
detainees about their conditions and their
rights.
The protesters say they aren’t going to
stop their daily demonstrations until ICE is
out of NORCOR. Opponents to the jail say
the relationship - in which ICE contracts
with’ NORCOR to incarcerate immigration
violators in the deportation process -
violates state statute prohibiting comingling
of local and federal resources. Nor should
the detainees be treated as criminals - most
immigration-only violations are either
misdemeanors or civil violations.
“There are other ways you can make
money, not on the backs of immigrant
workers, who, by the way, put food on the
table, day in and day out, for Oregonians,”
Ramirez said. “And we should be proud that
we have a workforce that’s working for
cheap to put food on the table, and yet this
is what we afford them? This is how we
recognize their contributions to our
livelihood, by imprisoning them in a place
like this at taxpayers’ expense? That’s not
right.
“What kind of message are you sending to
the state of Oregon and these farmers who
employ thousands and thousands of
farmworkers and then you have a jail here
that houses them?” Ramirez said. “What
worker in their right mind is going to want
to work these fields. The state has got to
come out and say, 'NORCOR, you’ve got to
end your contracts.’”
The ACLU of Oregon is looking into the
legal side of the relationship.
“In Oregon, we think that it is a clear
violation of state law for local facilities to
house ICE detainees and we are currently
deeply investigating the various ways in
which we could take action,” said Mat dos
Santos, legal director of the ACLU of
Oregon. “They built a facility they cannot
afford to run so they’re trying to use the
federal government funding to correct for
their bad financial planning.”
ORCOR opened in 1999, a four-county
collaborative of Wasco, Hood River,
Gilliam and Sherman counties, which all pay
set percentages to cover the jail’s costs. The
jail is overseen by a board of directors and a
rotating sheriff representative, and is run by
an administrator. By its own account,
NORCOR is one of only a handful of facilities
in the country that apply a multi-county
approach to the management of inmates.
The construction bond for the jail was
paid off in 2016, but now the facility is
seeking a levy on the four counties to help
cover future expenses, which will approach
$9 million, according to the 2017-18 budget.
NORCOR took in more than a half million
dollars last year locking up ICE detainees.
This year, the jail is anticipating twice as
much activity, and has budgeted more than
N
See ICE, page 5