Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield (left) and Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, (right) at a town hall at Portland Community College's Sylvania Campus on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2025. Many of the attendees expressed concern over federal immigration enforcement. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Concerns over aggressive federal immigration enforcement dominated Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield’s final town hall of the year.
About 150 people attended Wednesday night’s event at Portland Community College’s Sylvania Campus, where Senate President Rob Wagner, a Lake Oswego Democrat who represents the area in the state Legislature, joined Rayfield.
Over the course of an hour, more than a dozen people stood up to ask the same question: What could the state do to hold federal immigration agents accountable for violating due process laws and using excessive force and to require agents to wear identification?
Many demanded the state issue guidance to local governments and police, ensuring people can call 911 and receive help if they are being unlawfully arrested, detained or treated.
Hundreds of people have been arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal agents in Oregon during the last three months, including parents dropping their kids at school and a high school student and U.S. citizen on his lunch break. Federal agents have staged armed raids into apartment buildings, broken car windows to forcibly remove people and used chemical irritants on bystanders filming the actions.
Former McMinnville Mayor Remy Drabkin told Wagner and Rayfield that despite Oregon’s sanctuary laws prohibiting local law enforcement from working with immigration officers, police are confused about where to draw the line and are not showing up when people call 911 for help.
“We’ve been told repeatedly that law enforcement cannot interfere with or assist ICE, yet we’ve seen ICE escort people out of the county jail and then detain them,” she said. “Our request would be that you release statewide guidance for law enforcement that the public can easily access and understand.”
Refugees and immigrants from Ukraine and Afghanistan discussed fear of going out in public for risk of being wrongfully targeted and detained by ICE officers.
“When federal agents operate as if they are above the law, this is not law enforcement. That is lawlessness,” said Abdul Hassan, board president of the nonprofit Community Empowerment Foundation in Portland, and an Afghan who formerly served as a language advisor to the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
“When lawlessness is tolerated under the excuse of immigration control, the rule of law itself is being undermined. Let me be very clear: public safety cannot be built on racial profiling, collective punishment and intimidation,” he said.
Wagner suggested lawmakers in the upcoming February legislative session would produce a framework for local governments and police to understand how they can protect Oregonians from ICE agents’ use of excessive force and to ensure the state’s sanctuary law is enforced.
Rayfield told attendees that under Oregon law he is not allowed to give legal guidance to local law enforcement or local governments, but he said he has had conversations with local police leaders in many parts of the state. He asked attendees to continue being the justice department’s eyes in Oregon, and to continue documenting misconduct and reporting it to the Oregon Department of Justice’s Sanctuary Promise Violations Hotline.
Rayfield and several Oregon district attorneys wrote in November to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, saying that the state justice department would be monitoring federal agents’ conduct for potential prosecution.
And he recently told the Capital Chronicle that he was evaluating potential cases to refer to local prosecutors.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re a law enforcement officer, whether you’re myself, whether you’re one of my family members or just a community member, all of us have to follow the laws of the state of Oregon, and that includes ICE officers as well,” Rayfield told reporters before the townhall. “There is certain immunity that is afforded to federal officers, but that immunity is not absolute, and so our responsibility here in Oregon is to make sure that people are following the law, investigating, monitoring and ensuring that when people are violating that law, that we are holding them accountable.”
Antonia Lopez of Aloha said she had hoped Rayfield and Wagner would have a more concrete plan to get local law enforcement to protect Oregonians from federal officers.
“There seems to be a disconnect in what the chiefs of police, the sheriffs, all of these people are saying about what they can’t do when ICE shows up” she said. “Can they give them direction as to what they can do? And they can start doing that?”
The event was the last of nearly a dozen town halls Rayfield has held over the year, including events in Ashland, Bend, Eugene, Lincoln City, Portland, Salem and his hometown of Corvallis.
Commented