No ICE Age: The Oregon Way at Work

I kicked off the new year by upholding my promise to hold open-to-all meetings each year in each of Oregon’s 36 counties. The message I heard from Oregonians at the first town halls of 2026 in Jefferson, Deschutes, Clackamas, Marion, Lane, Tillamook, Clatsop and Columbia counties was loud and clear: ICE and CBP are lawlessly abusing federal power and must be stopped.

I heard directly from Oregonians in counties large and small that the footage from Minneapolis and across the country shows a ruthless trampling of our constitutional rights and due process by Trump's masked federal agents. Community members are justifiably mad and scared that they and their neighbors might be next to be targeted by Trump’s Gestapo.

The Wyden family has had direct experience with a Gestapo. During the 1930s In Nazi Germany, my mother was farsighted and brave enough to warn other Jewish families to leave Berlin. Many didn’t heed that warning. My family lost loved ones during Kristallnacht and at Theresienstadt. My mother and father were lucky enough to flee their native Germany and find refuge in America. Both joined the U.S. Army, and my dad was one of the Ritchie Boys who dropped propaganda pamphlets on the Nazis.

As the son of Peter and Edith Wyden, I have sought during my public service to defend freedom and the rights we are promised by the U.S. Constitution.

Donald Trump and his political handmaidens are conspiring to reverse those rights we all hold dear. Renee Good was exercising her First Amendment right to peacefully observe the actions of federal agents. They shot and killed her. Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked at the VA, was exercising his First Amendment rights to peacefully observe and record abuses by ICE agents. Donald Trump’s CBP agents shot and killed him. In both killings, ample video evidence exists to expose the Trump administration’s lies about these Americans as domestic terrorists and its cover ups of its lawless killings.

Even before Trump deployed federal agents to Portland and other U.S. cities last year, ICE was violating law-abiding citizens’ constitutional rights. During the first Trump administration, federal agents ripped apart immigrant families seeking a better life and isolated children in cages at the border. Now lawless agents are self-empowering their raids into American citizens’ homes, to shoot peaceful protestors and American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights and directly defying court orders. On top of these crimes, ICE has been pressuring states like Oregon to give up their voter rolls, and buying troves of Americans' most private information.

Enough is enough.

That is why I am firmly opposed to giving Trump’s ICE, CBP and DHS a single cent of federal funding until these killings and abuses end with accountability for everyone involved. There must be a change from the top down, starting with Kristi Noem and all political appointees at DHS. I have called on the Senate floor for investigations into the agents who killed two U.S. citizens and numerous immigrants, as well as the goons who have subjected immigrant families, including children, to extraordinary cruelty. I have introduced legislation with my fellow Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley to prevent unidentifiable federal law enforcement and armed forces from being deployed against Americans. I have rung the alarm over ICE gobbling up Americans’ data. With the members of the Oregon delegation, I demanded transparency from ICE officials at their Portland facility, and I called out DHS for obstructing congressional oversight. I stood with the Newport Fishermen’s Wives and the coastal communities that successfully stopped ICE from removing the search-and-rescue helicopter to make room for a detention facility.

The reality is that we haven’t even yet scratched the surface of the abuses reckless ICE and CBP agents have committed. I will keep pushing back in the Senate on ridiculous increases to the already bloated DHS budget. I will keep fighting to protect every Americans’ right to privacy and due process. I will keep responding to the needs of Oregonians and make available resources for communities affected by immigration enforcement agencies. And I will keep advocating for immigrant families searching for safety and opportunity my parents did. There is much more to do, and I am depending on every single Oregonian to join me in assisting community organizations on the ground using the muscle of the First Amendment voice to demand accountability and justice to end Trump’s ICE age.