When federal immigration agents started showing up for duty last year in plain clothes with their faces half covered, it stoked fear in immigrants. It also sparked concerns about accountability and transparency within the broader community. Still, an ordinance aimed at requiring police to display agency ID and keep their faces visible at all times faced an uphill battle at City Hall–until now.
After months of committee discussions, impassioned pleas, and amendments, a “Right to Know Who’s Policing You” ordinance from Portland City Councilor Sameer Kanal passed 8-4 Wednesday, May 27. Councilors Dan Ryan, Eric Zimmerman, Olivia Clark, and Loretta Smith voted against the legislation.
What’s changing?
In addition to prohibiting all police from wearing masks and requiring them to have visible identification, the legislation—which Kanal began crafting last September—also instructs city police officers to verify the identity of other law enforcement officers if it’s unclear whether someone is a sworn agent or an impersonator. The new ordinance also requires local police to document those encounters, as a tool for logging how frequently other law enforcement agencies aren’t cooperating with local rules, and to track where other agencies are operating.
There will be exceptions to the masking rules for specific operations, such as masks being worn to stop the spread of illness, and during freezing weather.
Under the new legislation, the City Council or mayor’s office can initiate a lawsuit seeking injunctive relief if law enforcement agencies aren’t abiding by the local policies.
The ordinance, co-sponsored by Councilors Angelita Morillo and Elana Pirtle-Guiney, was largely in response to federal immigration agents wearing masks to hide their faces, often while also donned in plain clothes with no visible badge or ID.
“You have a right to know that law enforcement agencies are operating transparently and accountably,” Kanal said during an April 30 City Council hearing. “You have the right to the information that you need if you wish to seek justice or a remedy in the future, like a lawyer, [needing] to know which agency may have picked up their client.”
Kanal said the ordinance will also help prevent law enforcement impersonators, like the man who killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home last June, or a man arrested earlier this year after allegedly convincing a 7-Eleven clerk that he was law enforcement, and then attempting to rob him.
It isn’t the first legislation of its kind in Oregon. In fact, earlier this year, the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 4138, the Law Enforcement Accountability and Visibility Act (LEAVA), which does much of the same thing. HB 4138 requires law enforcement agencies operating in the state to wear uniforms with the agency name and officers’ names or identifying numbers clearly displayed. It also prohibits facial coverings. The state law requires police agencies to adopt masking policies consistent with the bill.
But like the state law, the new city policy has innate limitations. Initially, some Portlanders expected the legislative change would empower police to “unmask ICE” by enforcing the ban on facial coverings, particularly for federal agents. That’s not the case, and councilors who opposed the ordinance said it created unrealistic expectations from the public.
“I don’t think it’s fair or right to mislead people into thinking this is gonna do more than what it actually does,” District 1 Councilor Loretta Smith said.
Portland Police Bureau (PPB) won’t be expected to police other police, but they will be expected to confirm that anyone carrying out immigration enforcement or other law enforcement operations is, in fact, police.
Kanal says his legislation makes it easier for the public to trust law enforcement if they know they are legitimate and accountable.
“For months Portlanders have been asking us to do something in response to the increasing wave across the country of unidentified individuals posing as law enforcement to rob, assault, and kidnap people,” Kanal stated in a newsletter following the vote. The District 2 councilor said his office collaborated with and sought feedback from community members, public safety leaders, and attorneys to craft “policies that can withstand legal scrutiny.”
How we got here
First discussed in the Community and Public Safety Committee, the ordinance was applauded by the ACLU of Oregon, immigrant rights advocates, and residents concerned about ICE agents, who have resorted to aggressive tactics under the Trump administration, often without identifying themselves. The now-common practice of stopping and forcefully detaining people unexpectedly is often likened to a kidnapping.
“I will never teach my children to blindly trust the demands of an adult unwilling to show their face,” Jasmine Sprague told Public Safety Committee members, urging them to support the ordinance. “I cannot and will not teach my children or the communities I organize with to trust adults wielding authority from behind a mask.”
Local pastors testified about members of their congregation who no longer show up to church because they fear being detained by ICE.
Immigration agents cite privacy and safety concerns as the impetus for concealing their identities, but critics say it sets a dangerous precedent for law enforcement and makes it difficult to know which agency is detaining a family member or loved one.
“None of us is safe if we cannot know the identity of those who have the power both to arrest and to harm,” Rev. Sara Fischer, a local Episcopal pastor, told city councilors in late April.
The “Right to Know” legislation found an unexpected champion in Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, who conceded that although it likely won’t change the policing tactics of ICE, the Council should respond to the tangible risks and fears of Portlanders in whatever way it can.
“I had concerns on the labor side and the operational side,” Pirtle-Guiney said. “I also kept coming back to that need to do something to support our community here, and the very plain call I was hearing from Portlanders who expect us to do everything we can, to not just hold the line, but push the line on our response to federal government, and to set the standard for what we can do.”
Pirtle-Guiney, who represents District 2 alongside Councilor Kanal and Dan Ryan, wasn’t initially on board with the legislation, but became a key vote after offering a few technical amendments.
Hurdles to passage
Despite widespread community support, Kanal’s proposed ordinance was met with skepticism and disapproval from top leadership at the Portland Police Bureau.
PPB Assistant Chief of Operations Brian Hughes cited “jurisdictional limits” that would thwart the Bureau from being able to enforce major elements of the ordinance and ultimately stymie its effectiveness.
“Federal officers operate under federal authority, and under the Supremacy Clause, the city cannot regulate federal operations through city code. That means some of the conduct that appears to motivate the ordinance may fall outside the city’s actual authority to control,” Hughes told the Public Safety Committee in March. Hughes also lamented the extra administrative work the ordinance would create by asking officers to document when they investigate or verify the presence of federal officers operating in Portland. PPB says local police don’t have authority to compel federal police to follow any particular policy.
In a May 26 memo to City Council, Portland Police Chief Bob Day also stressed the added administrative burden on sworn officers.
“I remain disappointed with how this legislation has been presented to the public, as well as the unfunded obligations it imposes,” Day wrote, noting PPB already successfully stops law enforcement impersonators and the Bureau already requires officers to clearly ID themselves while on duty.
The Portland Police Association—the union representing a majority of PPB employees—also pushed back, arguing any ordinance would need to go through a formal bargaining process between the city and the union.
But some of the most notable opposition came from the mayor’s office. Records show Mayor Keith Wilson sent a memo to Council President Jamie Dunphy, Council Vice President Olivia Clark, and Kanal on April 28, urging a vote against the ordinance two days before the full Council was scheduled to consider the legislation for the first time.
“Portland’s winning strategy against federal overreach has relied on close coordination with
community leaders and advocates, clearly lawful policies and actions, and a path to victory in federal court,” Wilson wrote. “As proposed, Councilor Kanal’s facial covering ordinance falls short of this standard, as it cannot lawfully deliver on the promise of unmasking federal agents.”
Wilson cited a recent ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down similar legislation out of California, and said Kanal’s policy would only leave the city open to a legal challenge from the Trump administration.
“The federal administration is hungry for a win in Portland, and we should not give them a victory so easily,” Wilson said.
District 3 City Councilor Steve Novick, who co-chairs the Public Safety Committee, along with the city’s attorney, Robert Taylor, both said they feel the core components of the ordinance are legally sound, so long as local police don’t try to compel federal police to comply. As Novick puts it, the legislation could be challenged in court and fail, but considering the stakes for Portlanders living with constant fear and threat of secret police, or worse, vigilante imposters, it’s worth the risk.
“We are trying to respond to the community demand that people know who’s policing them. I have to say that I think it is likely that we will fail,” Novick said bluntly, citing the Ninth Circuit ruling. But, Novick posited, “it is conceivable that the full Ninth Circuit, if that ruling or another ruling was appealed, would reverse that decision, or that the Supreme Court might reverse the decision. …I think this is a long shot. I think it’s an important enough issue to the community that maybe it’s worth taking the long shot.”
