A mob of anti-deportation activists is planning on protesting outside Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s home this weekend as part of a multi-coalition pressure campaign demanding that local officials force “ICE Out” of the sanctuary city.
Portland Contra las Deportaciónes, a group of left-wing activists opposing deportations, is circulating a digital flyer calling on followers to march together to the mayor’s private residence and rally in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“If immigrants aren’t able to have peace at home … neither is Keith Wilson,” wrote PDX CD in an Instagram post.
According to the call-to-action, the mob will assemble first at Wilshire Park around noon on Saturday before heading to Wilson’s home, which organizers said is located “a short walk” away in the nearby residential neighborhood.
Saturday’s planned protest is in concert with a citywide anti-ICE movement to shutter the immigration processing center in South Portland.
Wilson, alongside the city administrator, has the statutory power to revoke ICE’s permit to operate its federal detention facility on Macadam Avenue, the target of riots in recent months.
“[Wilson] it’s time to answer to the people! What are you going to do to revoke the ICE permit?” PDX CD pressed in the protest’s announcement. “For months, we have tried contacting the mayor. Thousands of emails sent, visits to his office, attempts to talk in public, all met with silence.”
Led by PDX CD, the Revoke the ICE Permit Coalition has waged a monthslong campaign putting pressure on the city government to repeal the permit. Their continuous efforts involve coalition members regularly appearing at city council meetings and a deluge of emails, now numbering nearly 22,000, continually bombarding city hall.
Following a flood of messages sent to the Portland City Council in particular, members of the all-Democrat policymaking body created a frequently asked-questions page on the city’s website, insisting that Wilson is primarily in charge of the permit revocation process.
“[I]nvestigative authority lies entirely with the executive branch (i.e., NOT City Council),” the explainer page emphasized.
Though it cannot unilaterally override the permit, the city council said it is “pursuing every legal strategy available within its legislative authority.”
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As grounds for the permit’s repeal, the city must show that Homeland Security has violated terms of its land-use agreement. In 2011, the city government had granted a land usage agreement allowing ICE to open its Portland field office inside the Macadam Avenue building.
According to Portland City Code 33.730, revocation of the agreement, colloquially referred to as a permit, can only occur through a lengthy administrative process potentially involving litigation.
Notably, the permit revocation process is already underway, and it is unclear what exactly the Revoke the ICE Permit Coalition wants Wilson to do. Some coalition members suggested he expedite the process or directly shut down the facility through executive order.
City officials, however, cannot bypass procedures due to due process requirements, and attempting to accelerate the timeline might render the revocation invalid. Skipping steps would leave a repeal vulnerable to immediate reversal, overturned easily should it fail to survive any court challenges, and thus legally defective.
“It’s understandable to ask, ‘But there is so much evidence, what more do you need?!’ The issue isn’t the volume or strength of evidence!” the city council tells constituents, noting that the revocation pathway is “a bureaucratic method and bureaucratic tools come with bureaucratic timelines.”
A formal complaint alleging violations of the 2011 land-use agreement was filed on July 16, 2025, triggering an oversight investigation conducted by the Portland Permitting & Development Department.
After allegedly finding infractions, the department then issued a violation notice on Sept. 17, flagging 25 instances in which detainees were held longer than the 12-hour limit.
In order to operate in Portland, certain businesses must be approved for conditional use and are subject, pursuant to Portland’s zoning provisions, to restrictions outlined in their respective conditional use permits.
One of the conditions of ICE’s land-use agreement is that agents shall neither detain any suspected illegal immigrant at the facility for more than 12 hours nor overnight. The city is arguing that those two dozen or so times, spanning from October 2024 to July 2025, constitute violations of the conditional 2011 arrangement.
The city is currently in a correctional period with the federal government, which gives the ICE facility time to bring its detention practices into compliance.
If the concerns are not addressed or violations recur, PP&D is able to initiate administrative review proceedings before a hearings officer, who may uphold the land-use agreement, modify its stipulations, impose penalties, or outright revoke the permit. In the interim, the ICE facility could face monthly fines of $950 per violation.
The landlord of the ICE facility and the site’s legal team met with the city on Dec. 30 to present arguments for administrative review. While the matter progresses, ICE can continue to operate in the city as is.
The process typically takes at least 18 months or more, sometimes stretching several years, depending on appeals from the federal government, starting with the Portland City Council acting in “a quasi-judicial capacity” and all the way up to the Oregon Supreme Court.
In the event that the permit is revoked, actual enforcement, as in how the city will physically kick federal agents off of the property, is another problem likely to spur legal action.
City leaders, meanwhile, are actively encouraging residents to report complaints about the ICE facility and federal agents assigned there, including claims of excessive force related to riot response. The city maintains an online portal for people to file such grievances and find legal representation.
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Councilors Tiffany Koyama Lane and Mitch Green personally offered to connect prospective litigants with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and the state attorney general’s office.
Wilson himself has publicly sided with Portland’s on-the-ground residents against ICE.
In response to ICE deploying nonlethal mob-control munitions last weekend to clear a crowd of agitators trying to storm the facility, Wilson put out a press release demanding that agents abandon the building and withdraw altogether from Portland. “To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson wrote.
On Wednesday, Wilson penned an opinion piece for Newsweek titled “Hold the Course To Stop ICE.” In it, Wilson advised, “Keep our coalitions together. Know that public frustration with the limitations of our offices will continue to invite provocateurs and opportunists.”
He noted that those actors will argue that “wielding civil land use laws and implementing fines can effectively remove ICE from our communities.”
“There is something quintessentially American about these demands,” Wilson wrote. “Like my fellow mayors, I, too, have wished that we could find a loophole or dust off a forgotten law.”
However, he added that “we don’t need to pull a legal rabbit out of a hat to win. We need only stay the course.”
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In 2020, a Black Lives Matter mob had set fire to the condominium complex of Wilson’s predecessor, former Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, despite his attempts to appease the movement’s demands.
At one point, Wheeler even joined BLM activists on the front lines and was tear gassed alongside them, earning him the nickname “Tear Gas Ted.”
Wilson’s office was contacted for comment.
