Where the Waters Are Rough, a Fishing Town Confronts Trump’s Priorities

The welcome signs on the edge of Newport, Ore., celebrate recent high school sports championships, point tourists toward the local aquarium and highlight two of its defining attributes — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific fleet and its designation as one of the nation’s 37 “Coast Guard cities.”

But the central coast town’s long, warm relationship with the federal government has been upended in recent weeks. First, a Coast Guard rescue helicopter was redeployed from the municipal airport to North Bend, Ore., 95 miles down the coast, with no warning to civic leaders, elected officials or the commercial fishing families who work the treacherous waters off the Oregon coast and sleep better at night knowing quick rescue is available.

Then local businesses began getting calls gauging their interest in providing basic services — like water delivery and solid waste removal — to what many concluded could only be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility at the airport, especially if it is free of the rescue chopper’s operation.

Taken with similar developments elsewhere, including Staten Island, where another Coast Guard facility is being considered for an ICE takeover, people around Newport have reached what they see as a demoralizing conclusion. To them, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both the Coast Guard and ICE, is prioritizing immigration enforcement over coastal safety, and partisan politics over a legacy of trust and communication.

“It’s mind-boggling that the decision was made to move this helicopter, but it’s just as mind-boggling that nobody bothered to talk to us about it,” said Taunette Dixon, a leader of the nonprofit Newport Fishermen’s Wives. “I don’t understand why the approach has to be adversarial here.”

Fishing and tourism are Newport’s economic pillars, and nearly every year-round resident knows someone who works on the water. They also know how dangerous that work can be.

The shoreline is notorious for king tides, sneaker waves and storm surges that can sweep people off beaches or jetties. To reach commercial crab grounds and offshore fishing runs, boaters must cross the Yaquina Bay bar, where the Yaquina River, on Newport’s southern edge, meets the Pacific Ocean. Along the bar, swells, tidal currents and shifting sand create an obstacle course of steep, breaking waves that challenge even Coast Guard rescue boats. Water temperatures off Newport average 50 degrees to 54 degrees, and the Pacific Northwest crab fleet has a higher fatality rate than crabbers more than 1,000 miles north in the Bering Sea.

“Bar crossings are the most dangerous portion of operating a fishing vessel,” said Amelia Vaughan, a commercial fishing safety expert with Oregon State University and a board member of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives. “Having close, easy response times from the Newport air facility can be the difference between life and death.”

The Coast Guard stationed a helicopter at Yaquina Bay, after the fishing boat Lasseigne capsized in 1985. Three people died when rescue aircraft were too far away to respond quickly. It was the Obama administration that first attempted to move the helicopter to North Bend, in 2014, to reduce staffing costs. Local residents sued, Congress intervened, and the Coast Guard is now required to give ample notice and provide research to support any relocation of the helicopter team — even temporary moves for maintenance.

So when rumors spread a few weeks ago that the helicopter was gone, many fishermen dismissed them. Response times from Newport average 15 to 30 minutes, from North Bend, at least 30 minutes longer.

A group of pilots have been demonstrating against ICE at the municipal airport in Newport, seen above in the first photo.

The helicopter’s transfer turned out to be only the first clue that things were changing.

As local officials searched for answers, they discovered notices that a federal contractor had sought to lease space at the airport. Business owners began comparing notes about strange calls: requests for daily deliveries of large volumes of water, or for the capacity to remove up to 10,000 gallons of human waste a day. Online job postings soon appeared from contractors seeking bus drivers, nurses and jail guards with immigration experience for positions based at the airport.

“The evidence is becoming increasingly clear,” said State Representative David Gomberg, a Democrat whose district includes Newport. “Somebody is considering basing a large detainment facility at the airport where the Coast Guard used to be.”

The Trump administration has not confirmed plans for ICE in Newport or any other federal agency. In a statement, a Homeland Security spokeswoman called the suggestion that potential Coast Guard rescue operations have been slowed by the helicopter’s move “an insult to the hard, heroic work the men and women of the Coast Guard put in every day.”

Still, it’s in keeping with other reports that the administration is looking to use Coast Guard facilities in coastal communities for immigration efforts. Ms. Dixon said a local Coast Guard leader in Newport became emotional when he told her that he could not answer her questions.

“We know this is not coming from the Coast Guard commanders based here,” she said. “They’re part of this community.”

Newport has a number of factors that might make it a more appealing site for ICE than a major inland city. The airport, several miles south of downtown, can handle larger transport planes. The city sits at the junction of two federal highways, and the population of Spanish-speaking residents has boomed over the past decade or so as the fishing and fish-processing industries have grown more dependent on immigrant labor.

Newport is also not Portland, Oregon’s largest city and a place with a long history of clashes with the White House, particularly under Republican presidents. President Trump’s immigration crackdown this summer spurred daily demonstrations outside Portland’s immigration processing center — right now the only stand-alone ICE facility in the state — and an expanding legal fight over the facility’s presence and the president’s call for National Guard troops to protect it.

Like most of Oregon, Newport and surrounding Lincoln County lean Democratic, but voters here helped elect a Democrat to the state House and a Republican to the State Senate and have an ecumenical relationship to Washington, D.C.

“Newport is a community that appreciates the federal government,” said Gary Ripka, a crabber and the owner of two crab boats. “There’s no knee-jerk distrust here.”

Mr. Ripka said he wanted to keep the debate over the helicopter’s location separate from conversations about ICE because he voted for Mr. Trump and appreciates some of the president’s moves to tighten the southern U.S. border.

“You just don’t have time to get partisan when you’re in the commercial fishing business,” he said.

The tension has drawn large crowds in this city of 10,000 people. More than 300 people, many holding tiny flags reading “No ICE in Newport,” attended a town hall that Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, held Sunday at Newport High School. A City Council meeting the week before attracted 800 people.

“They clearly are saying to themselves, ‘If we go to small, rural communities in Oregon and elsewhere, we have better prospects for our skulduggery,’” Mr. Wyden said of the Department of Homeland Security in an interview after the town hall. “You can see this community will not stand for that.”

Nearly every year-round resident knows someone who works on the water in Newport.

The county, the state and the Fishermen’s Wives have sued over the helicopter’s removal, and on Monday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order and demanded its return for at least the next two weeks. But the federal government has promised to fight the lawsuit and, in a statement, accused local and state leaders of attempting to “micromanage” the Coast Guard.

In a social media post Tuesday, Newport’s mayor said a federal contractor had been calling local hotels seeking up to 200 hotel rooms for a year — and that the Department of Homeland Security had not responded to the city’s requests for information.

People in the fishing and crabbing industries are already feeling strain from other federal decisions, including cuts to maritime research and the president’s trade war with Canada. Almost half of the crab caught in Newport go to Chinese markets, most by way of British Columbia, which has the facilities to store and ship them live. The trade stalemate between the United States and Canada risks driving down the prices crabbers can get in a season that starts in December.

The bulk of the crab will be caught this winter — when the weather is the worst and the danger the highest.

“It makes you question yourself: Is this what I voted for?” Mr. Ripka said. “It just doesn’t seem like these are decisions about the people who live and work here.”

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