We need our elected leaders to provide leadership to the ongoing protests against ICE in our city. With the real possibility of the protests growing, and ICE’s typical response of excessive force and the use of chemical arsenals, we need the city of Eugene to be proactive. We need to know which chemicals and how much are on site at the ICE office in the downtown federal building.

We need the city to legally demand to know these things, and to get a restraining order against ICE until we do. I suspect that our firefighters are expected to respond to a fire in that building. Shouldn’t ICE be legally accountable to respect our fire marshall’s requirements? A successful court ruling could legally establish ICE’s responsibility to operate under the law and not be free “to do whatever the hell they want to,” as Trump famously said. This could help nationally in forcing ICE to develop less aggressive tactics.

Richard Greene
Eugene