Washington County agencies fielded more federal immigration enforcement requests than any other county in Oregon over the past year.
Nationally, ICE traffic stops have turned fatal six times since January 2025, with 19 of 22 shootings by federal immigration officers occurring during vehicle stops.
Between June 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026, federal immigration officials sought assistance from Oregon law enforcement 329 times, a 246% increase over the prior year's 95 requests, according to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission's 2026 Sanctuary Promise Legislative Report.
Washington County agencies accounted for 87 of those. The Washington County Jail alone submitted 79 requests, the highest of any single agency in the state.
The Beaverton Police Department submitted one request during the same period.
Oregon's sanctuary laws, in place since 1987 and strengthened by the 2021 Sanctuary Promise Act, bar state and local police from helping enforce federal immigration law without a judge-signed court order.
A States Newsroom investigation published July 17, documented 22 people shot at by federal immigration officers during President Trump's second term. Three of the six people killed were U.S. citizens. Four deaths came during traffic stops.
The violence has reached the Pacific Northwest. On January 8, 2026, U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people during a vehicle stop in Portland. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield opened a formal investigation and said in a statement, "We have been clear about our concerns with excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland and nationally."
On June 27, in a separate incident in Washington state, ICE agents with guns drawn arrested Ezequiel Pacas Sr. during a traffic stop on Interstate 5 near Chehalis as his 14-year-old son watched from the vehicle. His wife, Kassondra Pacas, told KGW on July 14: "Nothing's gonna happen to us, but we're just living in a constant state of fear. Are they picking people up based on just looks? All my kids are dark-haired, tan-skinned, so it's just scary right now."
The couple's four children are all U.S. citizens.
Enforcement continues despite shootings
The most recent fatal shooting occurred July 13, when ICE agents killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national with legal work authorization, in Biddeford, Maine. DHS paused traffic stop enforcement after his death. President Trump ordered the agency to resume. Four days later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that officers will conduct vehicle stops "in order to continue their deportation campaign."
An ACLU report released the same day documented 432 incidents where immigration agents used or threatened force. Agents pulled people from cars 76 times, smashed windows 47 times, and rammed vehicles 14 times.
Resources for Beaverton residents
Several organizations serve Beaverton's immigrant community:
- Lutheran Community Services Northwest has a Beaverton office providing family support, refugee and immigrant legal services, and crime victim services in multiple languages regardless of immigration status.
- Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC) operates a statewide hotline at 1-888-622-1510 to report ICE activity anywhere in Oregon.
- Equity Corps of Oregon offers free immigration legal services: 1-888-274-7292.
- Oregon for All maintains a multilingual resource directory at oregonforall.us/resources.
- City of Beaverton lists immigration resources at beavertonoregon.gov/immigration-resources.
- Oregon DOJ Sanctuary Promise Hotline provides bilingual and multilingual advocates with interpretation in more than 240 languages. Reports can be submitted online in nine languages.
