Portland City Hall faced three competing demonstrations on Wednesday as the City Council considered a rental pricing ordinance and a change to city code that could slow the Trump administration’s local anti-immigration machine.

The November 20 Council meeting was disrupted on several occasions and included multiple expulsions. On the agenda was the ordinance barring algorithmic price-fixing in the city, which passed, and a first reading of an ordinance co-sponsored by Councilors Angelita Morillo and Mitch Green to implement a new fee on detention facilities. 

Before the evening meeting, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members set up canopies and handed out pizza outside City Hall, gathering to support a final vote on Morillo’s ordinance to ban algorithmic price fixing technology landlords use to inflate rents. At the same time, demonstrators calling on the City Council to rescind a city permit from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in South Portland rallied in the entrance to City Hall. 

As multiple altercations between the two groups began to cool, a third, smaller group showed up, further raising tensions. Right-wing live streamer Tommy Allen—who was arrested near the ICE facility on October 6 for assault and disorderly conduct—paced along the sidewalk shouting pro-Trump bombast and transphobic slurs before entering City Hall’s overflow section alongside two allies, still streaming.

The proposed detention center fee accounted for the lion’s share of public protest and testimony. The fee sets a framework for the city to address the costs associated with facilities like Portland’s ICE building, which often draws protests that require local police response and lately, has become a contamination zone of sorts due to federal police using chemical irritants as crowd control. If enacted, the fee would be levied against private property owners who rent their buildings to be used as detention centers, and would apply to new leases. 

As the federal government promises to ramp up detention centers across the country, including a potential facility in Newport, Oregon reported earlier this month, the local ordinance could indirectly deter President Donald Trump’s administration from expanding within Portland city limits.

“We have to throw sand in the gears wherever we can, and however we can,” Morillo said. “That doesn’t mean that one policy is going to resolve the way the federal government, with billions of dollars, is going to terrorize our immigrant neighbors, myself included by the way. What we can do at the local level is sometimes as unsexy and unfun as a fee.”

Hostility between councilors was also visible at the meeting. As discussion on the price fixing ordinance began, Councilor Dan Ryan remarked about an email and social media post he sent earlier in the week, comparing his progressive colleagues' price-fixing and detention fee bills to the "national socialist playbook," which many interpreted to mean the Nazi party.

"My weekly messaging inadvertently transposed two words which turned out, depending upon how you read it, could change the meaning to something very different than what was intended," Ryan said.

Both Councilors Morillo and Candace Avalos dismissed the remarks as a "non-apology."

While the current building ICE occupies in the city’s South Waterfront neighborhood would not see the fee enacted immediately, it would apply if and when a new lease becomes necessary for that building. Other pieces of the legislation would go into effect right away.

If passed, the fee would be levied on an annual basis to recuperate the costs associated with detention facilities, both to the city for administrative burdens and to community members directly impacted by the activities. The concept is related to longstanding legal measures called Pigouvian taxes, which seek to deter activity that has negative consequences on a community. Congestion pricing on traffic, environmental taxes on fossil fuels, or taxes on plastic packaging are all examples of Pigouvian regulations.

The ordinance also adds a “prohibited nuisance” section to the city code that applies to current detention facilities that cause harm, including the Macadam ICE facility. That means property owners cannot cause, allow, or fail to prevent the release of chemicals like tear gas into the public right of way. 

“Part of those fees are to go to people who are harmed, who are living in the buildings nearby, who are getting tear gassed, whose kids are suffering,” Morillo said.

It also applies to other structures located near a building when the facility's practices cause unsafe, uninhabitable conditions, or threats to public health. The amount of the fees, and how they will be distributed, will be determined upon passage of the ordinance, based on the city’s administrative rules.

Gray’s Landing, an affordable housing complex directly across the street from the ICE facility, has been pummeled with tear gas, pepper balls, and other munitions since federal officers escalated their protest response in June. The building is owned by REACH Community Development, which submitted written testimony supporting the ordinance. The organization said it has incurred over $100,000 in expenses due to its proximity to the building.

“The impacts we have experienced at Gray’s Landing are immediate, measurable, and costly,” REACH CEO Margaret Salazar wrote. “Affordable housing communities—and the low-income residents who call them home—should not bear the financial burden of hazardous actions taken by detention facilities operating within our city.”

Portlander Susan Anglada Bartley started a petition earlier this year to revoke a city permit that allows ICE to operate in its building.

“I’m a Celtic witch of mostly Irish heritage,” Anglada Bartley said in public testimony. “I’m a spiritual woman, a radical historian, and I have the gift of second sight, which means I have a strong predictive ability, sometimes seeing what will happen in political reality before it happens. This is part of why I wrote the petition to shut down the ICE detention center in March, long before the protests started heating up in June.”

But Anglada Bartley doesn’t support the impact fee, arguing ICE operations should cease at the facility, rather than being subject to a fine.

Anglada Bartley and a majority contingent urged the City Council to vote against the detention center fee proposal. Many wore t-shirts with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) logo, and others held signs that read “Shut Down the Macadam Facility.”

“It is a statist, authoritarian and capitalist plan that creates a pay-to-play system for detention centers in a moment when the federal government will spare no expense to perpetuate violence through ICE,” Anglada Bartley told the Council.

The city is currently investigating the facility for violations of its conditional use permit, and granted the law firm representing the facility’s landlord, Stuart Lindquist, an extension to provide materials to the city. Those materials are due December 1. If the city finds issues, it could ultimately come before the City Council in a quasi-judicial decision—essentially turning the city’s legislative body into an informal court of law.

Once the federal government submits its information by the deadline, Portland Permitting and Development will review the information and convene a meeting with the owner, according to the city’s website.

Councilor Sameer Kanal asked City Administrator Michael Jordan for an update on the investigation during Wednesday’s meeting, and to clarify which branch of the city government is currently responsible for making a formal decision about revoking the facility’s permits—Mayor Keith Wilson’s administration or the City Council.

“Right now, it’s the administration,” Jordan said.

With nine “yes” votes and three absences, the Council approved an amendment making minor tweaks to the language in the underlying ordinance.

Protestors chanted “shame,” and “ICE out of Portland,” as they exited the chambers.

The ordinance moved to a second reading and the Council will vote at an undetermined date.