Portland started using fixed speed cameras to identify and fine drivers in 2016. It began by issuing warnings starting on Aug. 25 of that year for violations occurring on the SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway corridor. The program started issuing formal speeding tickets at the end of a 30-day trial period on Sept. 24, 2016.
But a persistent problem quickly emerged. Every photograph had to reviewed and every citation had to be issued by a sworn police officer. That was creating a backlog in processing citations and hindering the city’s ability to expand its automated enforcement program.
In 2020, Portland’s fixed speed cameras issued 38,502 tickets. Each one had to be reviewed by a sworn police officer, a massive time sink to say the least.
It took until 2022 for a solution to be found, a notable victory for Portland. That was when the Legislature considered HB4105, which allowed the City of Portland to utilize non-police staff (specifically, “duly authorized traffic enforcement agents”) to review and issue citations based on photographs from fixed speed cameras, thereby freeing up police officers to focus on other duties.
Support for the bill was widespread.
“Allowing duly authorized enforcement agents to review citations will create more review capacity – while at the same time ensuring that appropriate training and certification for reviewing personnel are in place,” the City of Portland testified before the House Committee on Rules. “This will address police capacity as well as traffic safety needs.”
Multnomah County testified that requiring police officers to review and issue citations “reduces the capacity (of sworn police officers) for other police priorities and also creates a costly barrier to use of automated enforcement.”
“We are very concerned about the epidemic of traffic fatalities trending upward across Oregon,” said The Street Trust. “We would like you to rethink trac enforcement as an administrative function in order to increase municipal capacity to enforce traffic laws and to reduce costs to expand their automated traffic enforcement (ATE) programming in ways that meet local community’s needs.”
Dana Dickman, at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), testified that not only was each traffic safety camera violation being reviewed by a sworn police officer, but “100% of traffic safety camera violation review occurs on police overtime. Expanding the pool of qualified reviewers would lower the cost of this function.”
Reporting on HB 4105, Willamette Week noted that Portland was then advertising a starting salary for officers of $66,934. “In a 2,000-hour year, that’s $33.47 an hour. At time-and-a-half, an officer would be paid $50 an hour to review photo radar tickets.”
Willamette Week said those payments explained why the Portland police union opposed changing the law.
Once the bill passed, any sense of urgency in implementing the new law seemed to evaporate.
In December 2024, BikePortland noted that the change still wasn’t in place, even though the bill had been on the books for nearly two years. Jonathan Maus, publisher/editor of BikePortland’s news site, reported that he had asked the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s (PBOT) Communications Director, Hannah Schafer, about the status of implementing the new authority given to them in HB 4105. “PBOT is currently developing the program that will result in PBOT staff reviewing and issuing citations for moving violations from the automated enforcement cameras,” Schafer replied.
Bike Portland said PBOT expected to have about 40 cameras in operation and to be issuing 100,000 citations by 2025.
So here we are in July 2025 and sworn police officers are still reviewing each and every moving violation recorded by one of the city’s cameras.
Earlier this month, Willamette Week reported that even though speed cameras have been effective, more have not been installed because, as PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera put it, police officers are currently the ones to review all citations, mostly on overtime shifts, and the bureau is limited by police availability. They’re also hamstrung by capacity at the Multnomah County Circuit Court, which adjudicates the citations.
According to Willamette Week, PBOT says “it’s looking to hire three people who can review citations to alleviate the burden on police staffing and increase the number of tickets the city can process.”
PBOT’s Speed Safety Camera Program Manager, Steve Hoyt-McBeth, tells me he’s “very eager to get the program up and running” but “the current holdup is funding”.
Hiring the positions has been held for approximately six months because of PBOT’s budget challenges, he said in an email. “I was hopeful that I’d be able to begin the recruitment this summer, but the lack of a funded state transportation package, which puts an approximately $11 million hole in PBOT’s FY25-26 has kept the pause button pressed.”
Hoyt-McBeth said part of the holdup is also tied to staff capacity to develop the program. “No municipality in Oregon currently utilizes the statutory authority to have Agents issue citations, so we have to develop the training and program ourselves without a template from another jurisdiction,” he said.
Clearly, this entire situation with the speed cameras has been mishandled by Portland, which continues to shell out overtime money to cops . But it seems the City Council is clueless. Meredith Washington, Community Liaison for Councilor Angelita Morillo, read this post and responded to me, “I’m unsure what your message is here.”
So, when are the Portland Police going to relinquish their lucrative overtime work on speed camera violations and pass it on to non-police staff?
Creator: CHRIS DELMAS | Credit: AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump fired off more than 50 posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, during Kamala Harris’ Democratic Convention speech in August 2024
On Sunday, July 20, 2025, he posted 40 messages on Truth Social, bringing the total number of posts since his inauguration to 2,800.
He’s a damn machine with his stubby little fingers.
Previous presidents delivered significant, and even insignificant, policy pronouncements with carefully worded press releases that had been massaged by a raft of policy advisors. Trump just blurts things out, often in rambling, confusing word salad that veers off into unrelated topics.
Instead of delivering carefully thought-out foreign policy statements, Trump spews out declarations at all hours of the day and night. He probably would have announced “D-Day” , the June 6, 1944 invasion of Normandy, Franceduring WWII not with a stern, inspiring address to the nation but with a Truth Social post , “BOFFO!!!! WE DID IT. WE’RE SAVING THE FROGS. WATCH OUT KRAUTS. OUR TROOPS ARE ON YOUR DOORSTEP.”
On April 9, 2025, when the stock market was tanking, he posted: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” A few hours later, he announced a 90-day suspension of additional tariffs against dozens of countries, triggering a jump in the S&P 500 index.
In June, he shared a meme of himself walking down a dark city street with all-cap text that read, “HE’S ON A MISSION FROM GOD & NOTHING CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING.” I doubt he knew the connection to the Blues Brothers line, “We’re on a mission from God”.
On July 21, 2025, in a bizarre effort to deflect public attention from the Epstein controversy, Trump shared an AI-generated fake video from a MAGA TikTok user depicting the arrest and imprisonment of Barack Obama after posting about Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that the Obama administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to subvert his 2016 election victory. This followed another weird AI-generated video he posted on Truth Social in February depicting his plans for real estate development in Gaza, depicting Elon Musk and a shirtless Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vacationing at a “Trump Gaza” resort in the Palestinian territory.
On July 22, 2025, he took time out from his busy day to whine about late night TV hosts: “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone. These are people with absolutely NO TALENT, who were paid Millions of Dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be GREAT Television. It’s really good to see them go, and I hope l played a major part in it!”
To some degree, Trump is probably wailing into the void, since only about 5 million people use Truth social each month. But his posts, no matter how garbled, vitriolic or non-sensical, often get picked up by other media and spread far and wide., multiplying his audience .
He often ends his rambling texts with curt sign-offs like “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
We’d all probably be a lot better off if we ignored him.
A bill clawing back $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding for NPR and PBS, including OPB, has passed the Senate. It is expected to pass the House next and then to be sent to President Trump for his signature.
Are you and thousands of other Oregonians prepared to start or increase donations to OPB to replace the federal money it now relies on?
Public radio across the country is already begging for money. On July 18, Alyson Brokenshire, Senior Director, Principal and Major Gifts at PBS News Hour sent out a message: “For the first time in history, Congress voted to zero out funding for public media, including PBS News Hour. This decision creates a critical funding challenge for us, but one we can meet with your sustaining support.” WBUR in Boston also sent out a plea on July 18: “Give. Longtime listener or reader? Become a first-time donor at this pivotal moment. Give again. Thank you, a million times over, for being in our corner. Give more. Help us close this $1.6-million funding gap, right now. Give every month. When you become a Sustainer, we know we can rely on you. Month after month. Year after year.”
In fiscal year 2023, government grants to OPB totaled $4,679,653 or 9.5% of the station’s $49,370,988 in revenue from contributions, including sponsorships.[1]
I’m already a sustaining contributor to OPB. I provide ongoing, monthly financial support through automatic deductions from a credit card. I recently increased my monthly donations because of the threats of funding cuts by the Trump administration. Am I prepared to donate even more when those cuts are real?
My sense is that OPB has a tough road ahead if it tries to replace all of the $4,679,653 in annual federal support it now receives.
Current economic uncertainty is one thing likely to impact fundraising. There is already evidence that such uncertainty is leading people to scale back on discretionary spending, including charitable donations.Nonprofit giving in the US has taken a$65 billion hit since 2021, according to Philanthropy.org.
Another reality is that a substantial percentage of America’s private wealth is held by conservative and center-right donors, many of whom are wary of institutions they perceive as liberal, and many of whom see public media as liberal. That perception was recently reinforced by Uri Berliner, a former senior business editor at NPR. In 2024, he wrote a blistering critique of NPR in The Free Press, accusing it of lacking viewpoint diversity and ofa drift towards a progressive ideology
Trump administration officials and members of Congress have piled on, claiming that NPR and PBS push “left-wing propaganda” and accusing them of violating the CPB’s nonpartisan mandate.
Never one to be subtle, Trump has mercilessly blasted public radio and television. “NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote late Wednesday on Truth Social. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party. JUST SAY NO AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
“NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia)said at a subcommittee hearing earlier this spring,
Could OPB survive without the federal grants or any increase in donations? Probably, but the hit would be hard, though not as hard as the likely hit on KCUW in Pendleton, OR, which relied on federal money for 98% of its revenue in 2023. KCUW is is managed by members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states, but there’s no firm provision in the bill for that.
The impact of any cut in OPB’s programming would be felt particularly by Oregon and Southern Washington’s more educated and higher income populace (71% of OPB’s TV audience, 82% of OPB’s digital audience and 85% of OPB’s radio audience has attended college). The public broadcast audience also typically falls into higher household income categories and have for years, primarily because households that listen to public media tend to have more formal education.
One potential threat to any OPB fundraising outreach is the changing media landscape and its burgeoning cost.
Not only are media outlets multiplying, but alternative media are increasingly soliciting subscriptions. I have long subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (that subscription alone costs me $779.88 a year) and the New York Times, but added a subscription to Bari Weiss’ Common Sense newsletter, later renamed The Free Press, in 2021. I have since added subscriptions to a raft of other Substack publications with various points of view.
I also make contributions to a number of Oregon and national non-profits, the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, and a Ukrainian news site, The Kyiv Independent. And once in a while I’m a sucker for a GoFundMe plea.
My point is, like many Oregonians, I’m already heavily invested in trying to do good. But there’s a limit. Periodically, I have to cull my subscriptions and donations because the cost gets out of hand. This means reprioritizing. And in the case of public broadcasting, fundraising pleas are going to come from various entities competing against each other for support, including individual programs, such as PBS News Hour, and individual stations, such as OPB and KCUW.
If OPB wants to replace the $4,679,653 in government financing it is set to lose, it is going to have to convince a lot of people to up their giving or chip in for the first time.
This at a time when Oregon’s economy is facing a period of sluggish growth and some signs of weakness, with potential big givers from companies like Intel and Nike under stress and smaller givers uncertain about their economic prospects. President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is also likely to put pressure on many Oregonians and the state budget and there’s potential harm from Trump’s aggressive tariffs.
All food for thought.
[1] In most instances, sponsorships are considered charitable contributions by the underwriters. On OPB’s IRS Form 990, these sponsorships are included in the $49,370,988 reported as contributions and grants. There is also a small amount of sponsorships that meet the definition of advertising, which primarily occur on OPB’s digital platforms. For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on OPB’s IRS Form 990-T.
For FY 23, advertising is included in the program service revenue of $1,381,015 and in unrelated business revenue reported on our IRS Form 990-T. Sponsorships are not otherwise disclosed on the tax filings. Total revenue was $56,821,607.
Notable Sources of Revenue
$
Percent of Total Revenue
Contributions
$49,370,988
86.9%
Program Services
$1,381,015
2.4%
Investment Income
$3,446,034
6.1%
Bond Proceeds
$0
Royalties
$0
Rental Property Income
$415,851
0.7%
Net Fundraising
$0
Sales of Assets
$2,207,719
3.9%
Net Inventory Sales
$0
Figures are from Form 990 which non-profits are required to file annually with the IRS. These CPB grants are included in the Contributions and Grants revenue of $49,370,988 on OPB’s FY 2023 IRS Form 990. CPB grants are not included in government grants on the Form 990 as CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation, not a government agency.
If President Trump really wants to undermine American influence in Asia, he should insult Asian countries by nominating incompetent and offensive ambassadors to serve there. Oh wait. He’s already doing that.
On July 9, Trump nominated Nick Adams to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia. Adams was born in Australia, emigrated to the United States in 2012 and became an American citizen in 2021.
Once asked by The Sydney Morning Herald why he had left Australia for the United States, Adams replied: “Because I love guns, hot dogs, chicken fried steak, barbecue, cheerleaders, American football, small town parades, beauty pageants, pickup trucks, muscle cars and 16-lane freeways lined with supersized American flags.”
The New York Times has described him as “an early, fawning supporter of Mr. Trump” and cited his “incendiary rhetoric and vulgar humor that elevated him to political prominence”. Questions have also been raised about his role at the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a non-profit he founded in 2016.[1]
A prolific poster on social media (Adams has 625,000 followers on the social media platform X), he is unstinting in his ceaseless praise of Trump. “Just like King David from the Bible, President Trump is a good shepherd, and we are his flock!,” he posted on July 6. “President Trump should be added to Mount Rushmore, he should have a monument built on the National Mall, and he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” Adams posted on June 24.
He has “amassed a conservative following with his over-the-top ‘alpha male’ persona”, making him “part of an unruly world of online content that primarily appeals to young men, known as the manosphere,” the New York Times reported.
In 2023, Adams posted on X, “I go to Hooters. I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women. I am wildly successful. I have the physique of a Greek God. I have an IQ over 180. I am extremely charismatic. They hate this,” Adams posted on X in 2023.
Typical of his alpha male shtick, the Washington Post reported he had written about “how if your wife is ‘high-maintenance’ then you’re a ‘loser’ no matter how hot she is,” and at at a Capitol Hill Club Young Republicans gathering in Washington, D.C. , he said “ ‘nasty women’ are coming for two things: your mind and your testicles!”
Adams’ reputation precedes him in Asia. “Having risen to prominence on a wave of machismo, misogyny and crass humour, Mr Adams’ controversial online history includes Islamophobic comments, denigrating Mr Trump’s political rivals as supporters of Islam and railing against purported efforts to “teach Islam in schools,” reported The Straits Times, a Singaporean daily English-language newspaper.
“US President Donald Trump’s nomination of controversial internet personality Nick Adams as the next US ambassador to Malaysia has raised not only eyebrows but also questions about the fiery right-wing influencer’s suitability for the role and the state of relations between Washington and the Muslim-majority nation going forward,” The Straits Times said. Mainly Muslim ethnic Malays form the majority or nearly 60 per cent of the country’s 35 million population.
The South China Morning Post reported that Adams would be “a wrong fit” for Muslim-majority Malaysia which favors quiet diplomacy over headline-grabbing rhetoric.
I’ve lived in Malaysia and I know it is a key United States partner in promoting regional stability and economic growth. That’s particularly the case in its position as the current chair of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping of states in Southeast Asia “that aims to promote economic and security cooperation among its ten members.”
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has criticized Trump’s long-threatened tariffs as “sharpened instruments of geopolitical rivalry” and has opposed American support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“He (Adams) will have to tread a delicate and sophisticated line as the US and Malaysia negotiate trade tariffs, joust over their respective relationships with China and deal with an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate,” reported The Guardian.
The Policy Circle has also pointed out, “The U.S. has a variety of interests at stake in the Asia Pacific region, with pressing diplomatic, national security, and economic considerations, all against the backdrop of increased geopolitical volatility.”
Will any of this matter to the Senate when, or if, it holds a vote on Adams’ nomination?
Probably not, given the slavish behavior of Senate Republicans in pursuing Trump’s agenda.
After all, Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, was confirmed by the Senate as the United States Ambassador to France and Monaco in May by a vote of 51 to 45. This despite his previous conviction and prison sentence for tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions, for which he was pardoned by President Trump in 2020.
And Trump’s nomination of Kimberly Guilfoyle, a brash former model, former wife of now California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Fox News personality and former fiancée of Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to serve as Ambassador to Greece appears to be moving along.
Kimberly Guilfoyle speaking at Republican National Convention, July 17, 2024
With these precedents, why block an unqualified, crude, vulgar, Islamophobic alpha male from his confirmation?
[1]The Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, (FLAG) is a non-profit “dedicated to promoting and providing high-quality civics education that informs students and families about the greatness of America and the power of the American Dream”. Nick Adams is Executive Director. According to a Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Adams worked an average of 50 hours per week on Foundation business and was the only paid employee, in 2023 earning $411,209. That was a hefty increase from his 2022 compensation of $248,251. Why do so many of these political funds end up being just vehicles for personal grift?
Former Oregon governor, Kate Brown, and the Willamette Falls Trust don’t appear to be big on public disclosure.
On June 4, 2024, the Willamette Falls Trust announced Brown had been selected as the group’s new president. She occupied her new position on May 28, taking over from Andrew Mason, who led the trust’s work for more than six years.
Willamette Falls Trust, created in 2015, is based in Oregon City. Made up of local, regional and tribal leaders, it is a non-profit working to promote and preserve public access to the Falls. It’s likely Brown’s appointment was based, in part, on an assumption she could secure state funding for the Trust.
That bet paid off.
As the Legislature’s 2025 session ended, it approved giving $45 million to the Trust. The money will go toward the purchase of 60 acres of property on the West Linn side of the waterfall.
But the appropriation was not without controversy. Willamette Week reported that the Grand Ronde Tribe, which has historic treaty rights at Willamette Falls, had urged Gov. Tina Kotek not to give money to the trust. Grand Ronde tribal chairwoman Cheryle Kennedy panned the appropriation. “Any state investment in land at Willamette Falls must center the voices and rights of Tribal nations with ancestral ties to this sacred site, not a private nonprofit,” Grand Ronde tribal chairwoman Cheryle Kennedy told Willamette Week.
Going forward, you’d think the Trust would want to be transparent and straightforward about its operations in order to secure public support for its mission, but from the start it has been tight-lipped about what it’s paying Brown. Is it appropriate, modest, extravagant, embarrassingly over the top?
I e-mailed Brown asking her directly what total compensation she received from the Trust in 2024 and what her projected total compensation is for 2025.
David Perry, Vice President of Internal Operations at the Trust, responded, saying Brown asked him to reply.“Unfortunately, all personnel matters, including employee compensation, are considered confidential so I cannot provide the answers to your questions directly,” he said.
He noted, however, that Brown’s 2024 compensation will be noted in annual report the Trust and all other Oregon non-profits are required to file annually with the Internal Revenue Service and the Oregon Department of Justice. Those 2024 reports will be filed no later than November 15, 2025. Financial information for 2025 will go through a similar review and filing process, so will not be available until late 2026, he said.
As the conservative commentator John Stossel often says, “Give me a break!”.
The Trust, which is in line to receive an infusion of $45 million in taxpayer funds, wants to hide Kate Brown’s 2024 compensation until mid-November 2025 and her 2025 compensation until November 2026.
Kotek’s office stated Thursday that she is considering a veto of a budget line item from the Legislature’s “Christmas Tree” bill that allocated funding for all sorts of projects and initiatives, including the Willamette Falls project.
“[Kotek] is exercising her due diligence to understand more fully the use of these dollars and wants to hear more from all interested parties,” the governor’s office wrote.
The announcement came amid an ongoing conflict among regional tribes over both the project and fishing access at Willamette Falls.
The Senate has passed its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 reconciliation bill – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the deficit impact , with interest, over the next 10 years will be $4.1 trillion. It would add $5.5 trillion to the nation’s debt if made permanent.
The Committee says the bill is littered with special interest giveaways and new tax and spending entitlements, relies on numerous budget gimmicks, makes the tax code more complicated and less fair and explodes interest costs to nearly $2 trillion per year – including by adding to the debt and pushing up interest rates throughout the economy.
“The Senate took a bill that already borrowed way too much, and took it from bad to worse,” the Committee said. “The Senate expanded the House’s tax breaks, watered down its offsets, introduced new special interest giveaways, and added another trillion dollars onto the price tag.”
DonaldTrump and the Republican Party say the Committee and the Democrats who agree with it are wrong. The White House says the measure will actually cut the deficit by $1.4 trillion.
According to Factcheck.org, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, extending lower rates passed in 2017 and adding new tax cuts. But Senate Republicans have taken steps to remove consideration of the 2017 tax cuts in determining the bill’s impact on the deficit. Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was presiding over the Senate in April, ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chair, had the sole authority to decide whether extending the 2017 tax cuts officially adds to the deficit.
Graham and like-minded Senate Republicans have said that because the tax cuts have been in effect and are “current policy,” they are not new and do not add to future deficits.
The U.S. government announces its annual deficit and national debt each year, and often more frequently, such as monthly. The U.S. Treasury Department provides detailed information on the figures.
The national debt is the total amount of money the U.S. government owes from past and present borrowing, while the deficit is the difference between the government’s spending and revenue in a single year.
The TreasuryDirect website publishes data on the national debt, and the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data website provides information on both the deficit and the debt. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases monthly budget reviews that include the deficit or surplus for that month.
My question – If the Republicans are right, how are they going to explain the increase in the deficit and national debt that likely will be announced down the road if The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eventually gets Trump’s signature? Hmmm. Tis a conundrum.
Maybe they will just mimic Gilda Radner’s character, Emily Litella, on Saturday Night Live. When her misguided rants were challenged she just said, “Never mind”?
It was 1943. By all appearances, Rudolph Höss, his wife, Hedwig, and their five children – Klaus, Heidetraud, Brigitte, Hans-Jürgen and Annegret – had an idyllic life in the Polish countryside. They lived in an exquisite villa with a tranquil garden, a greenhouse and a small swimming pool.
The children played in the yard, Rudolph and Hedwig went about their daily lives and Hedwig adorned herself with lipstick and jewelry.
The Höss family’s backyard (Scene from The Zone of Interest)
But something was amiss.
Hedwig’s clothing and jewels were taken from a Jewish woman on her way to the gas chambers. Beyond the concrete wall at the property’s edge, topped with barbed wire, was a sprawling complex of gas chambers and crematoria known as the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the largest extermination camp run by the Nazis in Poland during WWII. Rudolph Höss, a German SS officer, was the camp commandant. An estimated 960,000 Jews were killed there.
Women and children deemed “unfit for work” being unknowingly led to gas chamber #3 at Auschwitz, where two thousand people at a time could be murdered. Source: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
“Human beings did this to other human beings and it’s very convenient for us to try and distance ourselves from them because we think we can never behave this way, but I think we should be less certain than that,” said Jonathan Glazer, the director of a 2024 movie, “The Zone of Interest” that depicted the mundane daily activities of the family at their home during the war.
In the movie, when her husband is transferred to a new post in Germany, Hedwig is enraged. She demands that the family stay at Auschwitz, claiming, “This is the life we’ve always dreamed of.”
It all brings to mind Hannah Arendt’s talk about “the banality of evil”, which she cited when writing about one of Höss’ compatriots, Adolf Eichmann, in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
“Never again,” proclaimed the weary idealists, the peace-seekers, the hopeful.
So much for that.
Moises Sotelo, 54, of Newberg, OR was on his way to work at about 5:30 a.m. on June 12 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers swooped in and took him into custody. According to an ICE detention database, Sotelo was transferred to ICE’s Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.
Moises Sotelo
“ICE Seattle arrested Moises Sotelo-Casas, 54, who is a citizen of Mexico, as a part of routine federal law enforcement activity that identifies, detains and removes criminal aliens to their country of origin,” ICE Public Affairs Officer David Yost said in a statement. “Sotelo has a criminal conviction for DUI in Newberg, OR, and he will remain in custody pending removal.”
Sotelo’s family sought community support through a GoFundMe account with a $175,000 goal to “Help the Sotelo Family with Expenses After ICE Detainment”. The account had raised $142,751 from 2,100 donations as of June 30.
There was a time when Moises Sotel0’s plight would have generated little public concern and certainly fewer helping hands. .
In 2022, the public perception of an invasion of migrants across the southern border of the United States bore some relation to reality.
U.S. immigration authorities carried out 2.38 million migrant encounters (a term encompassing apprehensions and expulsions) at the southwest border during Joseph Biden’s presidency in FY 2022, according to the Migration Policy Institute. For the first time, not only were there more Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans encountered than migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but there were significant attempted crossings by Brazilians, Ecuadorians, Haitians, Ukrainians, Indians and Turks. Monthly encounters peaked at over 370,000 people in December 2023, nearly 12,000 a day. This isn’t count migrants who crossed the border and escaped detection. (For a better understanding of the brutal migration process, see Footnote 2)
The crescendo of arrivals overwhelmed processing capacities, federal infrastructure, and border communities. As the chaos at the border increased, the public became more hostile to the migrants. Donald Trump exploited that hostility in winning re-election to the presidency in November 2024.
His administration has since initiated vigorous, combative mass deportation efforts that resemble military-style attacks at homes, businesses and public spaces. Masked and heavily armed ICE agents wearing tactical gear and carrying high-powered rifles have been descending on areas in unmarked black SUVs and armored vehicles. Immigrants showing up at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices for routine check-ins are being arrested. “What should be routine appointments are becoming detention traps,” Katrina Kilgren, an immigration attorney and pro tem instructor at the Knight Law Center in Eugene, OR told the Register-Guard newspaper.
Increasingly, ICE has been targeting work sites, such as farms, meat production plants and restaurants, and migrant worker gathering places, such as Home Depot, in immigration sweeps.
In April, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told attendees of the 2025 Border Security Expo in Arizona he wanted the agency to become as efficient at deporting immigrants as e-commerce giant Amazon is at delivering packages. “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Lyons said, describing his ideal deportation process as “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”
In one deportation case reported by the Portland Mercury, Jorge (a pseudonym being used to protect his identity) received a text message on his cell phone in Spanish from ICE in early June.Jorge had immigrated to the US from Nicaragua in late 2021 as an asylum seeker. He has an active asylum case, a work permit, a job, and a young family. The message told him to report to the nearest ICE facility within 12 hours to check in and sign paperwork, or face deportation. After consulting a lawyer, he followed the instructions, only to be detained by ICE agents and sent to a federal detention center in Tacoma, Washington.
ICE was holding about 56,397 people in detention facilities across the country as of June 15, 2025 likely setting a record high, according to TRAC Immigration. Despite the government’s stated goal of pursuing criminals, 40,433 out of 56,397—or 71.7%—held in ICE detention had no criminal record, TRAC Immigration claims. Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi held the largest number of ICE detainees so far in FY 2025, averaging 2,166 per day as of June 2025.
The vast majority of ICE detention centers are privately operated and for profit, with companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic dominant in the space. Tom Homan, Trump’s border adviser, has called for boosting ICE’s detention capacity to at least 100,000 people. In furtherance of that goal, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted a request in April asking contractors to submit bids for new detention facilities, transportation, security personnel, medical services and administrative support.
Florida is now turning a remote abandoned mosquito-infested 39-square-mile airport next to Everglades National Park in Florida into the newest migrant prison featuring mostly tents and trailers in sweltering heat and nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said the facility will be temporary and have “zero environmental impacts.”
“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group American Friends Service Committee, told The Associated Press.
President Trump visited the Everglades detention center on July 1, 2025.
The Trump administration has also sent immigrants to detention facilities outside the United States, including to Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo ( CECOT) in El Salvador, where brutal conditions predominate.
The Trump administration is also trying to deport a group of migrants convicted of violent crimes from countries including Cuba, Mexico and Vietnam to South Sudan, a country embroiled in fighting between various political and ethnic groups. In a Travel Advisory, the U.S. Department of State advises: “Violent crime, such as carjackings, shootings, ambushes, assaults, robberies, and kidnappings are common throughout South Sudan, including Juba. Foreign nationals have been the victims of rape, sexual assault, armed robberies, and other violent crimes.”
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to allow it to deport migrants to places other than their country of origin, often to countries plagued by violence. The Trump administration wanted the power to do so as part of its effort to discourage illegal migration by threatening to deport migrants a third country with no recourse.
Legal analyst Steve Vladeck told CNN, “…today’s ruling allows the government to remove those individuals and others to any country that will take them—without providing any additional process beyond an initial removal hearing, and without regard to the treatment they may face in those countries.”
To add insult to injury, Semafor reported on July 1 that the Trump administration is thinking about trying to void naturalized immigrants citizenship— potentially starting with New York City mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani. Asked about Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles’ proposal to strip Mamdani, who was born in Uganda but became a citizen in 2018, of his legal status, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it’s “something to be investigated.” Semafor reported that GOP leaders are increasingly comfortable with revoking foreign nationals’ visas over their political beliefs or actions, and that may soon extend to citizens.
An American naturalization ceremony
NPR reported on June 30 that the Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship, a practice heavily used during there McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s. “Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes — and giving U.S. attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online,” NPR said. Approximately 25 million immigrants are naturalized citizens.
Hans von Spakovsky, with the conservative Heritage Foundation, told NPR he supports the DOJ’s denaturalization efforts. “I do not understand how anyone could possibly be opposed to the Justice Department taking such action to protect the nation from obvious predators, criminals, and terrorists,” he said.
But Trump’s draconian efforts to halt border crossings and deport already settled migrants are now driving a new sympathy for migrants and resistance to ICE’s aggressive deportation efforts.
Even popular podcaster Joe Rogan is raising doubts about Trump’s deportation chaos. “Bro, these ICE raids are fucking nuts, man,” Rogan said in June. ” I don’t think if they, the Trump administration, if they’re running and they said, we’re gonna go to Home Depot and we’re gonna arrest all the people at Home Depot, we’re gonna go to construction sites, and we’re gonna just, like, tackle people at construction sites. I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that. They said, we’re gonna get rid of the criminals and the gang members first, right? And now we’re, we’re seeing, like, Home Depots get raided. Like, that’s crazy.”
Local government officials are raising concerns, too. A group of elected officials in one of Oregon’s most racially diverse counties pushed back Monday against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. (See footnote 3)
“ICE has no place in our neighborhoods,” Cornelius City Councilor Angeles Godinez told OPB in June. “When fear enters our community, trust leaves,” she said. “Without trust, our schools, our cities and even our local economies suffer.”
“To the immigrant community across Oregon, I am one of you, I see you. I know what you’re going through and I stand with you in unwavering solidarity,” said Tigard City Councilor Yi-Kang Hu.
And then there’s the massive cost of Trump’s immigration program, a veritable cornucopia of cash.[1] “If the bill passes, it could make ICE the nation’s largest jailer, Wirth more funding for detention than the entire federal Bureau of Prisons,” according to immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
With the federal deficit already high, and projected to increase to destructive levels under the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill”, America is going to pay a heavy price for Trump’s deportation fiasco. With the immigration blowout, the Senate-passed a reconciliation bill that would add over $4 trillion to the national debt through Fiscal Year (FY) 2034, $1 trillion more than the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
Protests against immigration arrests are multiplying as people rail against government overreach and a majority of Americans now say actions by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have “gone too far,” according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll..
But it’s not enough.
As The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said earlier this year, the Trump administration’s widespread and persistent cruelty, indiscriminate immigration enforcement tactics, wrongful questioning and detention of American citizens, unjust profiling, and abuse of common decency “signals a troubling shift toward a more punitive and dehumanizing approach to immigration enforcement.”
” History has shown us time and time again,” the Leadership Conference said, ” that when communities come together, our collective resistance has the power to rewrite the narrative and create change. While it may feel like we are in the midst of a dark chapter, together, we can write the next one — a chapter where compassion and justice prevail over cruelty and inhumanity. In the end, that’s what defines us — not just as a nation, but as human beings.”
We cannot be the Höss family. We cannot be innocent bystanders. Evil must not triumph. We must resist.
Immigration detention capacity: Expand capacity to detain immigrants taken into custody
$45 bil.
Border wall: Fund border barrier system construction and related activities
$45 bil.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Funding for hiring, training, transportation, facilities and legal resources to carry out immigration enforcement and removals
$31 bil.
State and local grants: Funding for border security, immigration enforcement and major event security. The Senate parliamentarian determined that this provision does not comply with the chamber’s rules, and it may be removed or modified.
$13 bil.
Homeland Security Department funding: For border security and immigration enforcement
$12 bil.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Funding to expand workforce and purchase new vehicles and technology
$12 bil.
Border surveillance technology
$6.2 bil.
Department of Justice grants: For state and local immigration and law enforcement
$3.5 bil.
Department of Justice funding: For immigration and other law enforcement
$3.3 bil.
Fund vetting for sponsors of unaccompanied alien children: Through the Office of Refugee Resettlement
$0.3 bil.
2. For a better understanding of what is driving migrants to the United States and who is guiding them through Mexico to the US border, read Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León. In 2015, he began a long-term ethnographic project focused on understanding the daily lives of Honduran smugglers who profit from transporting migrants across the length of Mexico. This 2024 National Book Award-winning story examines the complicated relationship among transnational gangs, the human smuggling industry, and migrant desires for safety and well-being.
3 .An immigration scholar, Austin Kocher, has written a Journalist Resource guide analyzing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest data, based on datasets published by the Data Deportation Project. His observations are revealing as to the Trump administration’s motives:
“The Trump administration is now demanding that ICE make 3,000 arrests per day. That is to say, ICE did not come close to meeting the quota set in January until June—and even then; only for a few days at a time. To be clear: this is a lot of arrests. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s also clear that the Trump administration’s daily arrest quotas are detached from the reality of what ICE can do—and even more so now that the new quota is 3,000 per day.
This prompts a further question: if these quotas are demonstrably unattainable, why have them? In my view, the answer is simple: the unattainability of the quotas is the point.
An essential component of Donald Trump’s longstanding approach to politics is to invent crises, or exploit existing crises, in ways that ensure they are unsolvable. No amount of funding for immigration enforcement will ever be enough to achieve his mass deportation goals. No amount of power concentrated in the office of the President will ever be sufficient to exercise totalizing control over immigration. The goal is not to solve a real problem, but to manufacture an ever-expanding crisis that justifies ever-expanding unregulated power.”
ThinkingOregon 