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A Cottage Grove organization has sued, saying federal immigration authorities have accessed state databases 1.4 million times.
Oregon State Police must halt agreements that violate the state’s longstanding sanctuary protections by sharing data with federal authorities conducting immigration enforcement, a new lawsuit argues.
The Cottage Grove-based Rural Organizing Project sued Tuesday, May 5, in Multnomah County Circuit Court with legal representation from the Oregon Law Center. At the heart of the suit’s argument are two systems: The National Law Enforcement Telecommunication System, also known as the International Justice and Public Safety Network, and Oregon’s Law Enforcement Data System.
The former is a database that allows local, state, federal and international law enforcement to collaborate depending on what each state decides to make available to outside agencies and out-of-state law enforcement.
It’s an arrangement that the plaintiffs say allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Oregonians’ driver’s licenses and vehicle registration data. The latter system is a state database of criminal justice records such as protection orders, investigative files and warrants.
The Rural Organizing Project seeks a court order that would declare state police’s agreements allowing federal immigration authorities access to these databases violate state law. It also seeks an order directing Oregon State Police to deny information requests from federal immigration authorities, end data-sharing contracts and mandate codes to be entered providing reasons for searches through the records.
“Federal agents are storming into our communities, targeting people based on how they look and disappearing our neighbors,” Martha Ortega, director of immigrant centers for the Rural Organizing Project, said in a statement. “Oregon State Police are helping them do it. When the state gives our private information to ICE, it is breaking the law and breaking Oregonians’ trust. How many families have been torn apart by Oregon State Police giving their names and photos to federal agents?”
The lawsuit says Oregon State Police’s arrangement violates Oregon’s sanctuary protections barring local and state law enforcement from assisting with immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant. States such as New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota have already adopted similar measures limiting ICE’s access to such databases, but the lawsuit argues that Oregon State Police has declined to do so, instead allowing federal immigration authorities to search its databases 1.4 million times from February 2025 to February 2026.
“Awareness that OSP shares sensitive information on people’s identities, addresses, vehicles, and locations fuels fear that immigration authorities will be more likely to target individuals based on their identities and associations,” the 54-page suit reads. “Many community members will not leave their homes, even briefly, for fear (of) being surveilled, targeted, kidnapped and disappeared.”
Kyle Kennedy, a spokesperson for the Oregon State Police, declined to comment beyond a general statement, citing pending litigation.
“OSP learned this morning, through media inquiry, of a pending lawsuit seeking injunctive relief related to federal immigration enforcement access to Oregon records,” he wrote in a Tuesday email. “OSP is committed to following Oregon sanctuary laws and has not taken any actions that would violate those laws.”
Several Democrats in Congress have raised concerns with the technology at the heart of the suit as well. In November, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, signed onto a letter urging 19 Democratic governors to block ICE’s access to data from the national telecommunication system through a loophole with state motor vehicle services, arguing such a barrier applied to immigration authorities would not undermine criminal investigations because states could still choose to share data on a case-by-case basis following a data request.
Wyden’s office at the time noted that Oregon was in the process of blocking ICE’s access to its National Law Enforcement Telecommunication System, known as NLETS. A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation referred the Capital Chronicle to state police, noting “while we supply data to OSP, as required by law, we don’t control the interfaces with NLETS or LEDS,” referring also to the other database, the Law Enforcement Data System.
The Oregon State Police, according to the lawsuit, declined as recently as February 2026 to restrict its data-sharing agreements with federal immigration authorities.
“It is now abundantly clear that a major reason that so few states have locked down the data they share through NLETS is because of an information gap,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter. “Because of the technical complexity of NLETS’ system, few state government officials understand how their state is sharing their residents’ data with federal and out-of-state agencies.”
The lawsuit isn’t the only recent legal action involving Oregon sanctuary laws. A December 2025 lawsuit from immigrant rights advocates argued that the Multnomah County Jail was violating state sanctuary protections through its agreement with the U.S. Marshals service. That case is ongoing.
The only successful civil lawsuit since Oregon’s sanctuary law was strengthened in 2021, however, was a case involving the city of Cottage Grove and the Rural Organizing Project. In that case, the organization secured a 2024 court order ensuring the city and its police would not assist with federal immigration enforcement.
