As ICE ramps up activities, cities and counties lean on old tools
The primary theme of our work here at the Urban Theater is that municipalities hold vast amounts of authority they seldom use. We urge them to exercise those powers in the face of a federal "layer cake" system that has been collapsing since the early 1970s, and one that has become outright hostile since the late 2010s. And this week we have on proud display actions from several entities across the U.S. utilizing authority they understand well.
Using Zoning as a Weapon in Portland
The New York Times reports this week that "Portland’s Leaders Turn to What They Know Best: Zoning." Here's what's happening. When the City issued the U.S. Federal Government a Conditional Use Permit for the ICE facility city leaders included a provision that ICE could not detain an individual for more than 12 hours. Learning that ICE repeatedly violates that provision, the City Council is now considering revoking the CUP. As a planning commissioner for four years, never once did we consider revoking a CUP, but cities do retain that authority. And now Portland's City Council is threatening to do exactly that. As a further poke in the eye, the City forced ICE to remove chain link fencing surrounding its facility because the federal government failed to get a permit. This is how cities begin to reclaim their territory - through exercising simple land use authority.
“This is so Oregon of us, so Portland of us,” said Elana Pirtle-Guiney, president of the Portland City Council, “to distill a huge federal policy issue that is also a moral issue that is also about the fundamental question of who we are as a country into a land-use problem.”
Welcome to the stage, Councilor.
ICE Free Zones in Illinois and California
On October 6, the Chicago FOX affiliate reported on Mayor Brandon Johnson's signing of an executive order creating ICE free zones throughout the City, even including a provision for private businesses to opt in to the "protection network." Very Chicago. The order prohibits federal agents from staging or otherwise operating from or in parks, libraries, and schools or any other properties "owned or controlled by the City of Chicago."
Meanwhile, in NorCal the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors and the San Jose City Council are following the lead of Mayor Johnson and establishing ICE free zones of their own. In Santa Clara County this includes "raising physical barriers and locking gates to prevent federal immigration agents from unlawfully using county properties for surveillance and arrests."
County Executive James Williams said the county will have to adapt to match the unpredictable nature of the federal government's enforcement. "What's happening is shifting daily, hourly," Williams said. "There's so much work in this space that by necessity has to remain nimble in order to be meaningfully responsive to what's happening on the ground."
Being nimble is exactly what blocks, neighborhoods and cities are good at. The Federal Government, not so much. Urban planning theorists and historians among other lines of scholarship have documented this for generations. The City Stage or Urban Theater belongs to the people who inhabit them - they write the script. Mayor Brandon Johnson deserves credit where credit is due for flipping the script on the feds and orchestrating the City's sidewalk ballet.
