New data on stepped-up immigration enforcement shows that last fall’s spike in arrests in Gorge communities matched a trend across the Northwest region.
It also offers new details about a dozen people that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained in Hood River and Wasco counties during the increased enforcement activity last November and December, as well as people arrested by immigration officials over the four-year period between 2022 and 2025.
Of the dozen arrested in November and December last year, half were detained in Hood River County and half in Wasco County. All but one are men. Ten are citizens of Mexico. All are either laborers or have no occupation listed on the detention intake form. They range in age from 27 to 58 years old.
Eight are single, two are married, and for two people, no marital status is listed. Two thirds of those arrested have no criminal convictions.
Two thirds of people detained by immigration officials in Hood River and Wasco counties last fall had no criminal convictions.
Source: DHS I-213 forms, obtained and analyzed by University of Washington Center for Human Rights. Graphic: Uplift Local.
These details come from a federal form, called an I-213, that the Department of Homeland Security creates the first time its agents apprehend someone who they believe can be deported. Four years of the forms were made public through a Freedom of Information Act request and analyzed by the Human Rights Center at the University of Washington.
And while this data provides new details, it is likely still an incomplete picture of total immigration detentions during that time, cautions Phil Neff, research coordinator for the center.
“The forms that this data is drawn from document ICE’s initial apprehension of people,” Neff told Uplift Local. “If someone is already in immigration proceedings and was arrested during the time period covered by this data, they might not show up.”
While the tally of arrests last fall that the data captures barely reaches double digits, the numbers relative to population paints a different picture. Both Wasco and Hood River counties were among the top ten counties across all of Oregon and Washington with the highest per capita rates of ICE arrests during the last three months of 2025. Wasco County ranked ninth in that count; Hood River County was fourth and had the highest rate outside the Willamette Valley.
Hood River County Commissioner Leti Moretti told Uplift Local that the impact of those arrests continues to have a detrimental effect on Latino residents.
“There’s just a lot of fear,” said Moretti, whose father manages a pear orchard in Odell. “My dad told me about one of his workers finally feeling somewhat comfortable about heading out to Rosauers to go grocery shopping, and then the gentleman’s wife just broke down in tears and had a panic attack in the car.”
The couple did not go in the store.
Moretti said a corps of volunteers are driving people to medical appointments and doing grocery shopping for residents who are afraid to leave their homes, but “that’s not sustainable long term,” she said.
The data does not show what happened to people after their initial arrest.
The newly-released forms go back further than last November, covering all initial ICE apprehensions over the four-year period between 2022 and 2025 in Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
Hood River records show four arrests in 2025 before November, including a U.S. citizen described as a “drug dealer” by occupation, and one arrest in 2022. That brings the total initial ICE apprehensions to 11 in the county over the past four years.
Wasco County records show three initial ICE arrests earlier in 2025, including a barber, and two arrests in 2024, also a total of 11 over the four year period.
In Klickitat County the records show that ICE agents detained three people last year — one in January, one in June and one in October — and four people between 2022 and 2024. In Skamania County, no initial arrests by immigration officials appear to have happened anytime in the period covered by the data.
Increased immigration has come up at multiple local public meetings in recent months, including November’s Hood River Soil and Water Conservation District meeting, covered by Documenter Wren Scott.
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Emily Harris is a co-founder and Uplift Local's Community Journalism Director, overseeing the local newsroom network and the Documenters program.
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