Feds Kept Local Sheriff in Dark About ICE Role in Cannabis Raid — Straining Oregon Sanctuary Laws

For the first half of the summer the U S Immigrations and Customs Enforcement field office in Medford Oregon remained relatively quiet It was out of the way tucked up against the regional airport and next to a preschool a laundromat and an undeveloped lot A group of local supporters monitoring ICE activity noticed something new on July Vehicles from the Federal Protective Operation a law enforcement agency that secures federal facilities were parked outside Behind the barbed-wire fence a long white bus with tinted windows idled behind the gates with the words GEO Journey Inc emblazoned on its side Grace Warner a volunteer who just arrived that morning to spot at the ICE facility was right now concerned We d never seen a bus like that there before she noted If GEO Group a major private prison and ICE contractor was there then immigration agents must be too Five miles away she soon learned federal state and local law enforcement led by the Drug Enforcement Administration were raiding cannabis farms She drove to one of the farms owned by a company called HempNova Lifetech Corp This is not an ICE raid This is just a drug bust Outside Warner was instantly approached by a spokesperson from the Jackson County Sheriff s Office which is barred from participating in preponderance federal immigration enforcement by Oregon sanctuary laws This is not an ICE raid Warner recalled the officer saying This is just a drug bust That explanation would be echoed by spokespeople for other law enforcement agencies By the end of the operation however activists monitoring the facility saw federal agents loading people onto the GEO bus Seventeen workers from the raids were detained and as night fell hurtled north toward the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma Washington an ICE detention center owned by GEO Group GEO Group referred a request for comment to ICE which did not respond According to emails obtained by local researchers at Information for Masses Use and shared with The Intercept local and state police were involved the raids at a great number of levels According to an internal sheriff s office email ahead of the operation seven of the locations raided had Jackson County sheriff s deputies listed as the primary representatives a local police official was the primary at another site a state trooper on a ninth site and an official from the DEA on the th While there were individuals taken into custody by ICE we had no part in those sessions When sought by The Intercept however the Jackson County Sheriff s Office denied knowing of any ICE activity that day The DEA was the lead agency for this inquiry Sheriff Nathan Sickler declared The focus of this episode was not immigration violations While there were individuals taken into custody by ICE we had no part in those sessions We did not detain anybody for immigration purposes Who Knew What When Oregon s sanctuary laws which prevent local coordination on federal immigration enforcement without a signed judicial warrant are a point of pride Though local agencies denied any direct cooperation with ICE and in affair of the sheriff s office denied knowing about ICE s involvement federal leadership appeared to have pre-planned immigration enforcement as part of the raids in the Medford area Under Donald Trump s administration situations like this are raising concerns about how Oregon s sanctuary laws are being upheld When collaborating with federal agencies it is not good enough to trust things to be business as usual without verifying explained Kelly Simon the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon We know the agenda and it s on our local leaders to take no part in it Sought if local law enforcement detained workers during raids Jackson County Sheriff s Office spokesperson Aaron Lewis disclosed it was not outside the realm of possibility The Jackson County Sheriff s Office was assisting with a large ongoing federal drug inspection through a regional Illegal Marijuana Enforcement Organization revealed Sickler the sheriff We follow the Oregon laws Sickler announced We don t communicate with ICE for those purposes Capt Kyle Kennedy a spokesperson for the Oregon State Police didn t comment on whether the agency had any knowledge of ICE involvement or planning before the raid but revealed State Police had seized one of the raided properties and arrested people there then handed over control to the DEA OSP did not have a role at the off-site location where the presumed transfer of DEA custodies to ICE may have occurred Kennedy explained The DEA declined to comment In the Medford area raids however federal agents had anticipated ICE s involvement ahead of time Not only was the GEO bus staged in Medford before the raid the Federal Protective Function had also been called in beforehand to provide extra safety Related Trump s Edge Czar Faces Backlash in His Hometown for Locking Up a Local Family A Federal Protective System official wrote in an case statement obtained by The Intercept that the sponsorship was necessary because of the prospective for collateral detainees the term used for undocumented immigrants who are not the targets of criminal enforcement but are swept up in raids The federal measure was there according to the official writing the analysis to ensure ICE could carry out its sessions in the event of demonstrations The Federal Protective Arrangement declined to comment The DEA has been ramping up its role in immigration enforcement In January Benjamine Huffman then-acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Protection wrote a memo authorizing the DEA to carry out the functions of an immigration officer Since then collaboration has been close A raid at a rural Kentucky restaurant in May led by the DEA was also shrouded in the language of proceeding review and led to immigration detentions with no explanation of how it happened For three months no further information was disclosed about the July raids and the ICE detentions including the role played by local police Regional media has yet to cover the raids and detentions and communication from cabinet leaders has remained opaque leaving region members without answers Oregon has one of the longest standing and strongest sanctuary laws in the country commented Simon from the ACLU of Oregon It is imperative that our local law enforcement agencies are taking great care to protect local guidance from being commandeered and used for this administration s cruel deportation machine Read Our Complete Coverage The War on Immigrants ICE Detentions The raids near Medford were part of a DEA-led federal drug analysis into psychoactive products sold at smoke shops around the country Local state and federal agencies were serving a warrant targeting a licensed cannabis company called HempNova Lifetech Corp according to a copy of the warrant shared with The Intercept Sickler the Jackson County sheriff stated the raids were part of an study into among other things illegal exchange of cannabis vape cartridges HempNova did not respond to a request for comment According to a list of seized items from one raid the DEA ascertained cannabis products packaged for brands that sell gummies and vape cartridges online and across the country The list of primary agents for each of the raids came in an email from Jackson County Sheriff s Deputy Jesus Murillo-Garcia ahead of the operation Out of raid locations connected to the examination Jackson County Sheriff s deputies are listed as the primary administrators on seven Central Point Police Department from a nearby city had an officer in charge of one and the Oregon State Police brought in their SWAT gang to lead operations on one location Central Point Police Department did not respond to a request for comment Sickler described his office s involvement as area liaisons to help out of area agents The bureaucrats seized videotapes tested and destroyed plants and broke into safe boxes Three people connected to the HempNova farms were booked at the Jackson County jail and later extradited on undisclosed federal charges to North Carolina which has been a focus of the nationwide DEA analysis Seventeen other workers were loaded into unmarked vans according to activist observers on site and eventually transferred to ICE A tinted shipping van enters the U S Immigrations and Customs Enforcement field office in Medford Oregon after local law enforcement and federal agents carried out nearby raids on July Courtesy Rogue Valley Migra Watch Detainees families scrambled to locate their loved ones At one raid led by the Jackson County sheriff an immigrant worker sent a video to his family that presented him being zip-tied The family went to the sheriff s office to locate the worker and got no answers The agents at the office mentioned they couldn t discuss the development The family then called to file a missing person analysis Dispatch records obtained by local researchers reveal confusion at his whereabouts That doesn t make sense the dispatcher says at one point when confronted about the disappeared family member I am not seeing anything here The exigency dispatcher called the Jackson County jail with the family on the line but the administrator there was perplexed Neither was certain where the workers went He never came to the jail the jail administrator stated in a recording of the call shared with The Intercept I think they took a group up to Washington I don t know I think they took a group up to Washington I don t know According to activists who monitored the raids and the federal facility in Medford the agents loaded two groups of people from the vans onto the idle bus at the federal facility which set out for Washington shortly thereafter One protester was arrested at the Medford facility for laying down in front of the bus For weeks it was unclear how multiple let alone who was detained by ICE and sent to Washington Eventually Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition which runs a statewide hotline validated that a detainee arrested during the July raids arrived at the Washington ICE facility Only two months later was The Intercept able to confirm the number of the people bused across state lines to ICE s detention facility Blurring the Mission In the past federal law enforcement bureaucrats working on issues surrounding Oregon s cannabis industry disclosed their focus was on human trafficking Since the Huffman memo expanded the purview of DEA operations however the line between drug and immigration enforcement is blurring I think it s fair to say that ICE is doing whatever it can to raise its arrest numbers revealed David Hausman co-director of the Deportation Records Project and a law professor at University of California Berkeley Overall that is sweeping in more people who would never have been priorities for enforcement in the past Related Episode Four Criminalizing Care In Oregon cannabis farms often operate outside established legal markets Oversupply and cratering prices left farmers to turn to more profitable gray and black markets Inconsistent regulation across the country created loopholes for businesses to sell psychoactive products marketed as hemp-derived across state lines In a current statewide document in Oregon all hemp flowers bought and tested by the Oregon and Cannabis Commission were in excess of legal limits on THC the psychoactive component of cannabis that is banned in certain state complicating interstate arrangement What we have seen from this administration is the emphasis on crime as a pretext to make immigration arrests Why the DEA picked the raid at HempNova is unclear Federal enforcement in southern Oregon s cannabis industry is rare and raids and investigations are handled largely by local law enforcement agencies Simon of the ACLU of Oregon warned of the consequences of the blurring missions of local and federal law enforcement agencies What we have seen from this administration is the emphasis on crime as a pretext to make immigration arrests she stated It would be twisting the intent of Oregon sanctuary law to rely on the pretext of specific other purpose being present to justify participating in immigration enforcement The post Feds Kept Local Sheriff in Dark About ICE Role in Cannabis Raid Straining Oregon Sanctuary Laws appeared first on The Intercept