Immigrant families across the Pacific Northwest are feeling the chilling effect of federal immigration enforcement. According to a KOIN report, attendance plummeted at the annual Tacos, Tequila & Cervezas Festival at the Portland Expo Center this month as fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity kept many in the Latinx community from attending. Vendors canceled in advance, and families stayed home rather than risk potential encounters with federal agents.

This trend isn’t isolated to Portland. Across Cowlitz County, immigrants and their allies are voicing similar concerns. In early December, the grassroots group Cascade Forward organized a series of “ICE OUT” protests in Longview and Kelso, demanding that local law enforcement refuse cooperation with federal immigration agencies. About 200 people participated across multiple sites, signaling rising frustration with what they view as unjust and unconstitutional enforcement tactics.

Governor Tina Kotek recently acknowledged that families statewide are living in fear—some too afraid to send their children to school or seek medical treatment. That fear has grown since the federal government rescinded earlier Department of Homeland Security guidance that limited ICE actions in “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches, and hospitals. With those protections gone, Oregon legislators and advocates have condemned renewed deportation arrests at or near these spaces, warning that they erode public trust and compromise community safety.

For immigrant families in southwest Washington, these federal actions reach far beyond abstract policy debates. Workers in Longview’s industrial sector, students in Kalama, and patients at PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center increasingly live with the knowledge that an everyday errand could turn into an encounter with immigration officers. That fear fractures neighborhoods and undermines the foundational American promises of safety and equal justice under law.

Community leaders argue that the best defense is solidarity: ensuring that immigrant residents—documented or not—can safely access public spaces and services without fear. As advocates in both Portland and Cowlitz County are reminding their neighbors, constitutional rights don’t depend on citizenship papers. They depend on all of us standing up to state overreach and insisting that local governments serve the people, not federal immigration priorities.