The Department of Homeland Security wanted to put an immigration detention facility at the Coast Guard air base in Newport, but stopped after federal lawsuits by the city of Newport, Lincoln County, Newport Fishermen’s Wives and the Oregon Attorney General’s office. (Quinton Smith/Lincoln Chronicle)By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle
The city of Newport helped fend off an effort by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to land Oregon’s first and only immigration detention center at its airport.
Now the legal bills to fight the government’s effort could reach $500,000 – so Newport is asking other cities and counties across the state if they will pitch in to help pay.
When a federal contractor expressed interest in creating a detention center at the airport and the Coast Guard’s rescue helicopter was removed without notice, two separate lawsuits aimed to foil their plans. Newport Fisherman’s Wives, Lincoln County and attorney general Dan Rayfield filed suit against the U.S. Coast Guard.
As a result, the helicopter was returned to its station at the airport in December and federal officials told a judge in March that the agency was no longer eyeing Newport for a potential detention center.
The city also filed its own lawsuit to stop the formation of an ICE facility at the airport and has racked up more than $350,000 in legal fees so far and expect them to go higher.
So Mayor Jan Kaplan is asking cities and counties across the state to help Newport cover the cost. So far, two progressive cities – Yachats and Ashland – and Benton County have agreed to chip in.
Money, money, money
The city expects legal fees to exceed $500,000. So far it’s paid $356,647 to Portland law firm Stoll Berne through the month of March, city attorney Tiffany Johnson told the Lincoln Chronicle.
Eight lawyers have collectively worked hundreds of hours on the case with the firm’s top-billed attorney charging $800 an hour, according to a January invoice. In March, the city council approved moving $350,000 from the general fund to cover legal fees.
Last week, the Newport city council accepted $15,000 from Ashland and $7,000 from Yachats. Benton County also committed to giving the city $5,000, which will be approved at the next council meeting.
“This isn’t an isolated incident, it has regional affect and Newport shouldn’t stand alone in that,” said Benton County commissioner Gabe Shepherd during the May 19 meeting.
The funds are a direct result of a letter Kaplan sent to an email list of Oregon mayors. He also brought up the topic in regional meetings.
Newport Mayor Jan Kaplan tells a news conference last November that the city would fight a federal immigration detention center at its airport. (Shayla Escudero/Lincoln Chronicle)“The city of Newport is asking for financial support from other local governments who would be impacted by a detention facility, as the potential establishment of an immigration enforcement, detention, processing, or related facility in Newport, Ore. has regional impacts on the safety, local economy and public infrastructure,” Kaplan wrote in his April 3 solicitation.
“Additionally, the United States Coast Guard rescue helicopter, located within the grounds of the Newport Municipal Airport, is critical for search and rescue missions in the region.”
The message asked for between $5,000 and $20,000 from any local government that could afford to help.
Back in December, people reached out to the city asking if they could donate money to help keep the ICE facility out of town, Kaplan said in an interview with the Lincoln Chronicle. Initially, Kaplan thought it would be a good idea to accept private donations but learned that could create privacy issues since the donations would be subject to public records law and there were concerns over safety since the topic was contentious.
“In my heart I believe had we done this in December we would have gotten a bigger response,” Kaplan told the Chronicle.
There was a time when the issue was more energized. More than 800 people showed up to city hall and online to voice their opposition and news outlets across the state were following the issue closely. The topic even made its way on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, now MSNOW.
“It is unusual to ask other cities for money but in this case I believe we were the eye of the spear and if we had not acted quickly a detention center would have been built here.”
- Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]
The citizens of Newport need to demand answers as to why Newport officials used the citizens’ money to fight these officials personal battle against the federal government.
Because an overwhelming majority of the citizens did not want a federal detention center in Newport. It was very personal, to a vast majority of Newport and Lincoln County citizens.
please leave my name off that list. Those who spent all that money should be responsible for the cost.
Then those people can chip in. Leave the rest of us out of it.
The whole thing is a racket. $800 hour attorneys and you want folks making less than $800/week to chip in? Why pay for an attorney on staff if everything is simply billed out?
City staff attorneys, especially in a town this size, generally don’t do the kind of major federal court litigation that was involved here.
The racquet is the game the Trump Administration and Family Foundation is playing. Heads they win, tails we lose. And it is freaking absurd that we have have to pay not once, but twice (or likely more), for the scam. Crime does pay it seems.
This extra cost is most likely passed on to the taxpayers alone with the pay for their services. They just decided to give themselves money for doing their civic duty (that they agreed to do for nothing when they were elected) which will also be passed on to the unsuspecting taxpayers. These people are out of control. However they overrode a special committee’s recommendations and gave themselves this money. I believe it’s $300 each month. In addition they keep fighting the federal government and we the tax payers are paying the price. Enough is enough.
The Stoll Berne firm is doing far more for our community than their billing records reflect. Two lead attorneys recently came to Newport to explain the lawsuits to local lawyers. They spent two days here and paid their own expenses. They outlined the ways they are meeting with other communities along the coast to prepare them for similar ICE efforts and to push back. They are doing all this in the interests of justice without fee. They are working with local officials and our city attorney to make sure we resist from a position of strength and legal precision. We should all be grateful.
Thank you, Susan. I, for one, am grateful for Stolle Berne’s attorneys providing their valuable expertise gratis to educate our communities that are largely blue collar. They could have even demanded much more money for the work they’re doing with the City. I also thank the Mayor and the City Counsel for being pro active and using their positions to protect the City and the region from unscrupulous plans to warehouse people identified as undesirable in concentration camps. These camps are being constructed across the country. Detainees at these camps will be housed indefinitely, treated badly, poorly fed with little to no health care or medical assistance until they die or agree to deportation. I don’t speak for all citizens of Newport and the region but I don’t want that on my soul.
I’m not so sure that “grateful” is the right word to use when attorneys charge $800 per hour or a similar hourly rate. The question that should be asked is whether this hourly rate is the law firm’s standard rate? Or is it a reduced “government rate” given that local governments operate with limited budgets and given the public interest nature of the work? If the latter, then perhaps “grateful” is the right word to use. If the former, then I would think not.
$500,000 is a lot of money for a city the size of Newport. Lee (see above comment) states “…an overwhelming majority of the citizens did not want a federal detention center in Newport.” Maybe that’s right, but do a majority of citizens want the city to spend about a half a million dollars in legal fees to essentially buy a raffle ticket that may or may not pay off? Especially when unrelenting inflationary pressure has made it nearly impossible for the city to pay for existing and needed infrastructure fixes, not to mention addressing social ills. While some may be right that taking a $500,000 legal gamble to address the issue of (the possibility of) locating an ICE Detention Center in Newport is what the majority of citizens want, would it not be a better thing to place such a huge expenditure on the ballot so that a public debate and a vote can guide the Newport City Council’s course of action? Given the totality of the circumstances— including the dire straights of Newport’s finances, the current and future needs of Newport, and the political opposition to Trump’s ICE policies — a vote by the public would be a more informed way to take the temperature of Newport and ensure that citizens do indeed prioritize this expenditure over competing needs within the city. It’s not often when an issue before Council begs for public plebiscite, but given the sharp philosophical divide on this issue, evident in several comments above, this may be one of them.
By the time a ballot measure would get on the ballot and be voted on, the detention center would have been built. It was very clear from the city council meeting where 800 plus people showed up what the overwhelming community opinion is on the issue.
Eight hundred people is not “an overwhelming majority of the citizens”. A vocal minority do not a majority make. It is half a million dollars from a city that’s not able to secure safe storage of water. RIF