After a local sheriff’s office presided over immigration agents’ arrest of a man inside a Marion County courthouse without a judicial warrant, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield jumped into action. 

The Oregon Department of Justice announced an inquiry into the incident to determine whether the incident warranted “legal action.” It came amid concern that the arrest violated Oregon’s sanctuary law, which prohibits such arrests in courthouses and bars Oregon law enforcement agencies from assisting federal law enforcement relying on administrative warrants. Gov. Tina Kotek said she expected Rayfield to follow up on the incident “in a strong fashion” and told reporters that “there is going to be an investigation by the attorney general.”

“I have a general expectation that everyone in the state, no matter who you are, follows the law,” she said last month. “And our sanctuary protections and what that means have been on the books for decades.”

Since the state began tracking them in 2022, the number of alleged sanctuary law violations from Oregonians to the state’s Department of Justice has risen under the Trump administration. There have been nearly 150 complaints in 2025, more than double total reported complaints alleging violations from 2022 to 2024 under the Biden administration, according to the most recent data from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. 

But there’s a key hurdle. The Oregon Department of Justice can review potential violations of the sanctuary law to intervene in a “non-punitive” way to improve agency compliance with the law, but it doesn’t have the authority to file lawsuits or discipline officers in Oregon to enforce it. 

While Oregon lawmakers passed a slew of sanctuary law protections in the most recent legislative session, the meat of the state’s limitations on immigration enforcement come from a 2021 state law that then-Speaker Kotek helped pass through the Oregon Legislature. It’s up to individual Oregonians under that 2021 law to sue law enforcement agencies that violate the sanctuary protections. 

Now, Kotek and Rayfield say they could need more tools as they face growing questions from immigrant rights advocates over how they will enforce the increasing number of pro-immigrant measures Oregon has enacted. Other states have either considered or passed laws that explicitly empower the state attorney general to pursue lawsuits if law enforcement violate their courthouse immigration arrest bans. Both Minnesota and Colorado have pursued criminal prosecutions against federal immigration agents. 

“I support strong, meaningful sanctuary protections, and I believe we should always be reevaluating our laws to ensure they’re serving Oregonians and doing everything they need to do to protect people,” Rayfield said in a statement to the Capital Chronicle. “There are real questions worth examining – about clarity, about enforcement authority and about whether the protections on the books today are as robust as they should be.”

Kotek agreed in a Friday statement leaving the door open to legislative action and changes.

“If Oregon’s sanctuary laws are found in some way to be lacking, we owe it to communities across Oregon to look into what needs to change to improve laws that keep our communities safe,” she wrote. “No one should be afraid to go to work, take their kids to school or access the services they need, especially services in our courts.”

Enforcement has long been lax

Supporters of the state’s sanctuary policies have long framed them as key to ensuring crime victims, witnesses and survivors of domestic violence can come forward to Oregon law enforcement without fear of repercussions or deportation. 

The first-in-the-nation sanctuary law passed in 1987 prohibited Oregon law enforcement from conducting immigration enforcement, with voters affirming its passage during a ballot referendum in 2018. But after the first iteration of the Trump administration exposed gaps in how local jails and administrative subpoenas could be used to gather information for civil immigration enforcement, Oregon Democrats passed a more sweeping framework in 2021. 

That law banned courthouse immigration arrests and spelled out how any person could enforce the law through filing a civil lawsuit. Yet the only successful legal challenge brought under Oregon’s sanctuary laws since 2021 involved a lawsuit backed by the nonprofit Cottage Grove-based Rural Organizing Project. The organization helped win a court order in 2024 barring the city and its police from collaborating with federal immigration authorities to enforce immigration law.

Since then, some legal scholars have questioned how a person who was deported with the assistance of an Oregon law enforcement agency could pursue justice. Tung Yin, a professor of law at Portland’s Lewis & Clark Law School, previously told the Capital Chronicle that such a person “probably would not have a claim under state law.” 

The next step? Oregon Democrats in the 2027 session could take up legislation to add more teeth to the state’s sanctuary law and its enforcement.

Doing so would likely open them up to attacks from Oregon Republicans, who are eager to seize the governor’s mansion in November and block legislation making it harder for the state to collaborate with the federal government on immigration enforcement. The top federal prosecutor in Oregon in early April sought a court order for information to locate what the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon called “violent criminal aliens” released “into Oregon communities rather than to federal immigration authorities, who sent immigration detainers to Oregon officials.” 

Democrats say that information about when people are released is publicly available online from the Oregon Department of Corrections, and they have already signaled appetite for more legislation.

“In many ways, we were the first state in the country ever to become a sanctuary state,” Rep. Willy Chotzen, a Democrat from Portland who has helped lead the party’s legislative efforts responding to the Trump administration, told the Capital Chronicle last month. “But if there are things that other states are doing that are even more protective in how they enforce those sanctuary laws, I would love to learn more about it, and would be super open to introducing that type of law.”

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

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