The Northern Oregon Regional Corrections (NORCOR) facility, in The Dalles, will no longer honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers on people brought into the jail for local charges. The NORCOR jail officially announced its change of policy in April, after settling a lawsuit with a man from Hood River, who claimed that his constitutional rights had been violated by their officers.
NORCOR is one of the jails in the state that has been housing ICE detainees, despite a three-decades-old state law limiting the assistance that can be given to federal immigration agents by local law enforcement agencies. The lawsuit and policy change also highlighted that NORCOR, until recently, was honoring federal detainers despite a federal court ruling in 2014 that jails did not receive independent authority to keep people in detention for longer than their local charges deemed necessary, just because they received detainers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Detainers are Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to jails to hold suspected undocumented immigrants in jails for up to another 48 hours, to allow time for immigration agents to come and take them into custody.
ICE detainees will continue to be housed by the jail, according to the NORCOR website, but it will no longer accept detainers for those brought in on local charges. NORCOR is paid $80 per day per detainee to hold ICE detainees, serving as an overflow facility for the immigration enforcement agency.