Data shows sharp increase in Eugene ICE detentions

In June, more people were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities in Eugene than during the previous four months combined, according to records obtained by the Deportation Data Project.

The 39 detentions in June marked a dramatic rise compared with June last year, when ICE recorded a single detention in Eugene. For July, the number of ICE detentions in Eugene fell to 10, but that was still twice as many as were recorded in July 2024.

So far this year, through July, nearly four times as many ICE detentions were recorded in Eugene as during the same seven-month period last year.

ICE says on its website that detentions are “non-punitive.” The agency decides whether detention is necessary to secure a person for future immigration or removal proceedings, according to ICE’s website.

The June surge coincides with what a local attorney and advocacy group organizer described as new enforcement activity based at an ICE administrative office in downtown Eugene’s federal building.

The Deportation Data Project is a research initiative led by academics and lawyers at the University of California, Berkeley, who gather and publish data on ICE and other immigration agencies through a series of rolling requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Migrants and asylum seekers from various parts of Oregon who have pending immigration proceedings travel to the federal building in Eugene for check-in appointments, which are “important for pursuing their legal rights in the United States,” said Katrina Kilgren, a Eugene-based immigration attorney.

But some have been detained, Kilgren said. People detained in Eugene are probably headed for an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, she said.

President Donald Trump vowed in his Jan. 20 inauguration speech “to begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

An executive order issued that same day stated: “It is the policy of the United States to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens, particularly those aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people.”

Records obtained through the project also show that, since Jan. 21, almost half of those detained and held in Eugene’s field office had no criminal history or pending criminal charges.

“The Department of Homeland Security has consistently over time said they’re focusing on criminals, but the numbers don’t reflect that,” Kilgren said. “The vast majority of people who are detained by ICE do not have a criminal record — or if they do, it’s one that was of the immigration system’s own making.”

Kilgren was referring to immigration-related criminal charges such as illegal entry and illegal re-entry. Even though these are related to immigration violations, those charged are labeled as criminals within the records kept by ICE, even if the detainee has no other criminal charges.

Kristin Yarris, an organizer with the Rapid Response Coalition in Lane County, said top federal officials discussing immigration enforcement use “political rhetoric” emphasizing violent criminality, but “even things like DUIIs for folks can be marked on their records that can cause them to be suspect or more vulnerable to detention right now.”

The group has been active in Lane County since last fall, Yarris said.

“We work in coalition with statewide rapid response and deportation defense groups to protect community members from immigration enforcement activities,” Yarris said.

The coalition in early June began a legal observer program. Volunteers outside the federal building encourage those checking in to make sure they have emergency contact information heading into their appointments. The legal observers also share attorney hotline information.

Yarris said the group also tries to count detentions, asking those who arrive to check in with legal observers on their way out.

“That’s how we would have confirmation about a detention, just like someone we observed enter and then never exit,” Yarris said.

Sometimes, “a family member comes because they’ve been alerted by their family member who’s been arrested by their one phone call that they have been arrested,” Yarris said, with legal observers approached by the “very upset” and emotional relatives outside the federal building.

“We try to connect them to resources the best we can,” Yarris said.

The Deportation Data Project’s count of detentions “tracks with our anecdotal observations” for June, Yarris said.

While the rise in detentions reflects priorities under Trump, questions remain about the full scope of ICE activity in Lane County and Oregon.

Out of the 39 detainees in June and 10 detainees in July, it’s unclear how many of those, if any, were picked up by ICE agents on the street.

Questions submitted repeatedly by Lookout Eugene-Springfield to an ICE spokesperson received no response.

The average detention time in Eugene’s ICE holding room averaged just under six hours, though in some cases, detainees were kept for as long as 18 hours.

Kilgren said she’s never seen the actual holding room where people stay in Eugene when detained. She’s not even allowed in the waiting room for people with check-in appointments — despite having had access to that area in the past, she said.

“It’s not just me,” Kilgren said. “All the other local attorneys have been similarly shut out. Now we’re not even allowed in the hallway. They tell us to wait outside the building.”

Kilgren said this June she was able to meet with a Eugene detainee in a legal visitation room, which she described as two small rooms separated by a window, “so we talked at each other through a window.”

The person she visited was still wearing the clothes they had been wearing upon arrival, Kilgren said.

“Once they’re taken into custody, their shoelaces are taken out of their shoes and their property is taken off of their body, so they no longer have access to their cellphone,” Kilgren said. “But they’re not put into incarceration clothes until they’re booked into the Northwest detention facility in Tacoma.”

Kilgren said she’s representing a detainee who arrived at the federal building on July 9 for a check-in, only to be told that the computer system was down.

Told to return the next day, she did. After some time waiting while others arrived for check-ins and then left, “they told her that she was being arrested, and they told her that within an hour, she would be transported out to Tacoma,” Kilgren said.

Kilgren said she thinks the abrupt departure had to do with the presence of legal observers outside the federal building.

“They put her in a transport vehicle, specifically when the legal observer had gone to change his car meter; his meter had been up,” Kilgren said.

While Kilgren said she knows other detainees are allowed to make a phone call to an emergency contact while in Eugene — before their cellphones are confiscated — that wasn’t the case with her client.

“They stopped at a gas station and she was allowed there to call, to make a phone call to tell her mother that she’d been detained.”