DailyAstorian.com // WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2019
146TH YEAR, NO. 157
Astoria man
detained by
ICE eligible
for asylum
ONE DOLLAR
Salvage Chief
could get new life
after a disaster
New details emerge
at court hearing
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
TACOMA, Wash. — An immigra-
tion judge has found that an Astoria man
detained by agents in December near the
Clatsop County Courthouse is eligible for
asylum over concerns about his safety if
he were to return to Mexico.
Ruben Vera Perez, who appeared at a
hearing at the Northwest Detention Cen-
ter in Tacoma on Tuesday, is also eligible
to have his deportation canceled. He could
qualify for a cancellation of removal —
a legal procedure that would essentially
end the deportation process — because
his deportation would cause unusual
hardship on his wife and children, who
are all U.S. citizens, and because he has
lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years.
“There’s hope,” Maria Perez, his wife,
said after the hearing.
Ruben Perez was detained after he
appeared in Circuit Court to handle a pro-
bation matter related to a drunken-driv-
ing case. While driving to the county jail
to check in with a pretrial release offi-
cer, Maria Perez said she was stopped
by authorities in two unmarked vehicles
who subsequently took her husband into
custody.
Since then, local activists have been
raising money to help support the fam-
ily while he’s away. A vigil was held in
January to bring attention to the nature
of his detention. More than $1,000 has
been raised on a GoFundMe page set up
and circulated by Indivisible North Coast
Oregon to help the family pay bills.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The Salvage Chief docked at Tongue Point.
The World War
II-era craft could
become an asset
See Asylum, Page A7
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
Knight,
Hunsinger
spar over
state grant
Port gave up $1.5 million
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Port of Astoria Commissioner Bill
Hunsinger and Jim Knight, the agency’s
executive director, sparred Tuesday over
why the agency turned back a $1.5 mil-
lion state grant.
The Port had been awarded the money
in 2016 from the state Department of
Transportation’s Connect Oregon infra-
structure grant program. The grant was
based on a proposal to repair about
30,000 square feet of dock on the west
side of Pier 2, where seafood is landed
and brought into processors renting space
in the agency’s warehouse.
A
fter a Cascadia Subduction Zone
earthquake and tsunami, major
debris will need to be cleared
from the Columbia River, and
believers in the Salvage Chief think
their vessel could be the one to help.
In its prime, the World War II-era
landing craft provided assistance to
nearly 300 stranded vessels — includ-
ing the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker it
refloated after a spill in Alaska’s Prince
William Sound in 1989.
The vessel worked as a salvage
ship for 60 years until it was moth-
balled at Swan Island in Portland in
the late 2000s. The vessel was pur-
chased in 2015 by Salvage Chief LLC,
an asset-holding company managed by
Pier 39 owner Floyd Holcom.
It was brought back to Astoria with
the vision of turning it into a train-
ing vessel for local mariners. It sits
docked at the Marine and Environmen-
tal Research and Training Station at
Tongue Point.
Today, the ship is used to educate,
with MERTS students working on
the ship’s machinery every Monday
and Wednesday and the U.S. Depart-
ment of Defense using it for training
exercises.
ABOVE:
The Salvage
Chief has a
long history
of successful
recovery and
emergency
assistance
operations.
RIGHT:
Don Floyd
points out
photos in the
galley of the
Salvage Chief
depicting the
history of the
vessel.
See Salvage Chief, Page A8
See Port, Page A8
Ocean Park man behind KKK flyer says, ‘I was radicalized’
Schaefer
acknowledges
he was wrong
By ALYSSA EVANS and
NATALIE ST. JOHN
Chinook Observer
OCEAN PARK, Wash. —
Will Schaefer doesn’t wear a
white hood. He doesn’t go to
cross burnings. Instead, like
a growing number of iso-
lated young white men, he
cultivated his racist beliefs
in the safety and anonymity
of online forums.
Then he decided to test
them in real life.
In late January, Schae-
fer, 20, who has no affilia-
tion with the Ku Klux Klan,
made flyers with a hooded
klansman pointing at the
viewer like Uncle Sam.
They read, “The KKK wants
you!” There were little pull
tabs with a link that went to
an anonymous, private Dis-
cord forum run by Schaefer.
The flyers went up around
downtown Astoria, where
a KKK chapter terrorized
Catholics and immigrants
in the 1920s. They quickly
were pulled down.
Amid a public uproar,
Schaefer told the Astoria
Police Department he was
responsible. But Deputy
Police Chief Eric Halverson,
‘SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOW A CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE ELEMENT FOR
ENGAGING EVEN UNAFFILIATED
EXTREMISTS INTO THE FOLD.’
Brian Levin | director for the Center for
the Study of Hate and Extremism
Police Chief Geoff Spalding
and City Attorney Blair Hen-
ningsgaard declined the Chi-
nook Observer’s requests to
confirm Schaefer’s identity,
citing concerns that identi-
fication would threaten his
and his family’s safety.
The slender, soft-spoken
Ocean Park resident hardly
looked dangerous when he
opened his front door in
pink pants and a green Kool-
Aid T-shirt for an interview
last week. He wore a hang-
dog expression as he tried to
explain himself.
Schaefer grew up on the
internet. He appears to have
made his first social media
profiles around age 11. He
posted a cartoon crocodile he
drew, professed his love of
Pokemon. As a young adult,
he got interested in the alt-
right — a counterculture of
mostly young, almost exclu-
sively white conservatives
who espouse racist, nation-
alist and isolationist beliefs.
He joined at least one group
with explicitly racist beliefs.
Participating in those groups
became a central focus of his
life.
“I got addicted,” he said.
‘I was radicalized’
The alt-right forums were
See Flyer, Page A7