Open Letter: Let’s Not Divide the Movement Over the ICE Building Closure

Protestors, legal advocates, and immigrant communities are fighting the same system. Let’s stay focused.

This letter comes from local protestors and community members who have been present outside the Portland ICE facility. We wrote it to clarify the impact of the building’s closure, push back against division, and call for deeper unity in the fight for immigrant justice.

In recent weeks, Portland’s ICE field office has been closed to the public, and it has made a difficult situation worse for many immigrants. Legal advocates and families have raised serious concerns, and they’re right to do so. When people are detained and transferred out of state without access to legal help, it’s a crisis.

But let’s be clear about who made that happen.

The decision to close the Portland ICE building was made by federal authorities. Protestors didn’t shut the doors. ICE and DHS did. To imply otherwise, or to omit this critical context, is not just misleading. It risks fracturing a movement that is already under pressure.

Many of us protesting outside that building are doing so in direct solidarity with immigrants, not in opposition to them. We are there because we want the detentions to stop. Because we want to bear witness. Because we want a future without ICE.

Yes, the closure of the building has removed one of the last local intervention points where lawyers could act quickly. But that was already a fragile system, not a just one. The solution isn’t to preserve ICE facilities in the name of access. It’s to build new forms of community-based legal infrastructure while we continue to dismantle the system that detains and deports our neighbors.

We believe legal advocates, protestors, and immigrant organizers should be working together, not being pitted against each other by narratives that ignore how this system actually works.

So we’re calling on:

• Media outlets to include the voices of protestors in coverage, especially when describing cause and effect
• Legal organizations to open lines of communication with those witnessing outside detention sites
• Community members to resist the temptation to blame each other when it’s the system that deserves the scrutiny

We can hold multiple truths at once. We can grieve the harm this closure causes and still demand abolition. We can fight for better legal access and still protest ICE’s existence. We can show up differently, but toward the same goal.

Let’s not let omission divide us. Let’s stay focused. Let’s keep building and dismantling together.

Signed by Local advocates for immigrant rights and protest safety (and others in solidarity — contact us to co-sign)

If this letter resonates with you as a protestor, advocate, or community member, we invite you to co-sign and share.

To add your name, email signalfirespdx@protonmail.com To help spread the message, share this letter with your networks, especially in spaces where there is confusion or division around the ICE building closure.

We show up in different ways, but we are in this together. Let’s keep our focus on the system, not each other.