AI Generated Image (not the Oregon Legislature or the people in this story)
An Oregon immigration detention ban is now on Gov. Tina Kotek’s wish list for the 2027 legislative session, but any bill she gets would have to survive federal appeals courts that have already struck down similar laws in California and New Jersey. Kotek told reporters at a press conference last week that she wants a law that would “never allow detention facilities in the state of Oregon,” the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported on Nov. 10, and her office has not said what the bill would contain.
The timing matters. Oregon is one of a few states without a large overnight federal detention facility, and people ICE arrests there are processed in Portland and held long term in Tacoma, Washington, according to the Capital Chronicle. A settlement that gives Oregon advance warning of any new federal site expires next summer, and Democratic leaders want something sturdier first.
What Oregon already has, and why it may not hold
Oregon passed a law in 2021 barring the creation of private immigration detention centers. The Capital Chronicle described that law as possibly unenforceable, and the case law explains why. In GEO Group v. Newsom, decided Sept. 26, 2022, the full Ninth Circuit voted 8-3 that California’s AB 32, which banned private detention facilities, violated the Supremacy Clause as applied to facilities run under ICE contracts. Oregon sits in the Ninth Circuit, so that ruling binds its federal courts.
New Jersey tried a narrower route and lost too. Its 2021 law barred the state, local governments and private companies from making, renewing or extending contracts for civil immigration detention. On July 22, 2025, a divided Third Circuit panel held in CoreCivic v. Governor of New Jersey that the law violated intergovernmental immunity, the doctrine that states may not directly regulate or discriminate against the federal government. Writing for the majority, Judge Stephanos Bibas said the ban was “in substance a direct regulation; it destroys the federal government’s marketplace.” Judge Thomas Ambro dissented, arguing the law reached only non-federal actors.
Both courts looked past the laws’ wording to their effect: cutting off the contractors ICE depends on was treated as regulating ICE itself. The Supreme Court reinforced the discrimination side of the doctrine in United States v. Washington (2022), unanimously striking a state workers’ compensation law that singled out federal contract workers.
The Newport fight and the openings left to Kotek
The push grows out of a dispute over the Coast Guard site at Newport Municipal Airport, which the Trump administration acknowledged in federal court it had looked at for a temporary holding facility. Oregon sued, and an October settlement requires at least 30 days’ notice before environmental permitting for a Newport facility, a requirement that expires in August 2027, the Capital Chronicle reported. Federal officials said there were no current plans for detention centers in Newport or elsewhere in Oregon, and a DHS spokesperson told the outlet the agency had no new facilities to announce “at this time.”
State Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, told the Capital Chronicle he is in “early conversations” about legislation and said the settlement “leaves the door wide open.” The outlet reported that a new bill might try to work through state-controlled services such as permits and utilities rather than an outright ban.
That approach carries its own risk. Permitting and utility rules that apply to everyone are generally safe from intergovernmental immunity challenges. Rules written so that only federal immigration detention trips them would invite the same discrimination argument that sank Washington’s workers’ compensation law. Tung Yin, a Lewis & Clark Law School professor, told the outlet by email that he did not “see any way in which this could survive a challenge by the federal government.”
Supporters see a ban as a way to keep large-scale detention out of Oregon communities. Contractors and federal officials have argued in these cases that housing detainees is a core federal function states can’t block, and the courts have so far agreed. The likely result is a bill that tests how far Oregon can use ordinary permitting powers before a judge calls it a disguised ban, a question headed back to the Ninth Circuit if the state passes one.
Laws limiting cooperation fare better than outright bans. New York’s ban on local ICE agreements survived a sheriffs’ bid for an injunction, and the Fourth Circuit will review Virginia’s limits on local ICE agreements. New sites, meanwhile, keep opening or advancing elsewhere, from Appleton, Wisconsin to San Antonio, and Oregon’s attorney access fight with ICE has kept the issue before state lawmakers.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Oregon Capital Chronicle, “Gov. Kotek wants Oregon to ban immigration detention centers. Others have tried and failed.” (Nov. 10, 2026)
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (en banc), GEO Group, Inc. v. Newsom, No. 20-56172 (Sept. 26, 2022)
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of New Jersey, No. 23-2598 (July 22, 2025)
- U.S. Supreme Court, United States v. Washington, No. 21-404 (June 21, 2022)
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