When Hermiston’s Hispanic Advisory Committee was putting together its goals for 2025, one quickly rose to the top.

“One of the things they heard – loudly – was that (residents) wanted more information on immigration,” said Lilly Alarcon-Strong, Hermiston city recorder and a staff representative on the committee.

The committee is hosting an immigration resource fair in Hermiston on Sunday to help meet that loud demand for information. The fair will feature a talk from attorney Eamonn Roach, who has practiced immigration law from his office in Pasco, Washington, for more than a decade.

“It has been an onslaught since Trump returned to office,” Roach said, adding that his office first got an uptick after the November presidential election and subsequent inauguration. “Jan. 20 is when we started getting an insane amount of calls.”

Clients often call because they want to know how Trump’s policies may affect their ongoing immigration case or how the new administration may affect their ability to stay in the country. While Roach said he counsels clients based on their personal histories and backgrounds, he plans to remind attendees at the fair of their Fifth Amendment right against self-recrimination when dealing with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“There is no requirement to answer questions,” he said. “You stay silent, and that’s probably the No. 1 thing that will help the most.”

Although there are significant immigrant populations across Eastern Oregon and the inland Northwest, most of the focus for immigration enforcement remains on larger cities. The region’s immigration detention facilities are in Portland and Tacoma, Wash. Although organizations that serve immigrants do outreach to rural communities, they are largely based west of the Cascades, Roach said.

Being well-prepared for potential encounters with ICE can overcome that disparity, Roach added. He pointed out that ICE operations are nothing new. The agency deported an average of 310 people per day last year under the Biden administration. And the year before that, it averaged 467 people per day, higher than any single year in the first Trump term.

ICE now has a daily quota of well over 1,000 arrests per day, a number Roach thinks Trump will try to reach by increasing the amount of workplace raids. Roach thinks that plan is unlikely to succeed without help from the immigrants themselves.

“(Trump) is doing everything he can to scare people, to get them to leave on their own, because he doesn’t have the resources or the ability to get everybody and to deport them all,” Roach said. “If he can have some people scared enough where they leave on their own, that’s a win for Trump.”

Local law enforcement officials in Umatilla and Morrow counties have already told the East Oregonian they plan to comply with state law that forbids them from working with immigration enforcement without a warrant.

While fear is already starting to spread in other immigrant communities across the Northwest, Alarcon-Strong, the Hermiston city official, said residents should feel safe when coming to the event.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/15/amid-high-demand-hermiston-hosts-immigration-resources-fair/