The Medford Police Department has collaborated with regional and federal law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That’s according to Information for Public Use, a group that researches public records.
Medford and other law enforcement agencies in Southern Oregon have shared surveillance tactics, as reported by Jefferson Public Radio.
In August last year, the ACLU of Oregon sued the City of Medford, claiming that the police broke state law by monitoring the social media accounts of local organizers. That litigation is ongoing.
When asked to comment about the latest findings from Information for Public Use, Medford Police Lieutenant Geoff Kirkpatrick said that, because of pending litigation, the department cannot comment at this time.
We learn more about what’s happening in Medford from Kelly Simon, the legal director of the ACLU of Oregon.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez, in today for Dave Miller. Thank you so much for tuning in. Public records show that the Medford Police Department has collaborated with regional and federal law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. That’s according to the group Information for Public Use. Our news partners at Jefferson Public Radio recently reported that the Medford PD and other Southern Oregon agencies have shared surveillance technology and tactics, and that has the ACLU of Oregon concerned. Their legal director, Kelly Simon, joins me now to explain why. Kelly Simon, welcome to Think Out Loud. Thank you for joining us.
Kelly Simon: Hey, Jenn, it’s good to be here. Happy to be chatting with you today.
Chávez: Likewise. So the most recent revelations around information sharing in Southern Oregon centers around an email thread from something called the Southern Oregon Analyst Group. What is that group and who’s in it?
Simon: I think it’s still pretty hard to tell who exactly is in the group and what exactly is the purpose of this group. But what we do know is that what it seems to suggest is that when it comes to surveillance in Oregon, there’s not a lot of oversight, there’s not a lot of transparency, and there’s not a lot of accountability.
Chávez: And more information about what was happening in the emails being sent as part of this group was obtained by public record request and released by the group Information for Public Use, like I mentioned. What did you see in those emails, in that email thread that you found most concerning?
Simon: Yeah, so a lot of the communications included sort of dumping of the minds or sharing of all of the different types of technologies that each agency on the thread had available to them and sort of offering of, ‘hey guys, let me know if you need anything from any of these.’ So one example is a Flock automated license plate reader, which is a sort of new technology on the scene of police technology.
But what we also see in this email thread is that there was a request from an ICE officer, a part of the division called, a division of ICE called Homeland Security Investigations, and they asked the Medford Police Department, “Hey, can you run a couple of plates for us?” Medford police replied, “Here you go. Here’s the data from our license plate readers.” No questions asked, no requests to confirm that it wasn’t for the purpose of an immigration enforcement, just very cozy, easy, sharing of information.
Chávez: Yeah, and I know when we’re thinking about ICE and immigration enforcement, immediately might come to mind Oregon’s status as a sanctuary state. I think a lot of folks are aware that Oregon is considered that way, but maybe not all the details of the law. So can you walk us through exactly what our sanctuary state status means and has that been legally violated with what you’re seeing in this email thread?
Simon: Yeah, so Oregon has had a sanctuary law in place for decades, and in fact, Oregon has one of the most robust, if not the most robust, sanctuary law in the entire country, and what it makes clear is that our local law enforcement cannot be in the business of enforcing immigration law, full stop. Not our local agents, not our local tools, not our local buildings, not our local dollars, not our local time. That is just something that local law enforcement must stay out of. And so when we see this sort of nonchalant sharing, from the very agency that is responsible at the federal level for enforcing those laws, we have a lot of serious concerns that that law could have been violated.
Chávez: Got it. So OPB did reach out to the Medford Police Department and Medford Police Lieutenant Geoff Kirkpatrick said they were unable to comment for our story today due to pending litigation, which I want to get into with you in just a minute. But on this topic, I do see that the department recently indicated to our news partners at Jefferson Public Radio that the license plate check in question was for a crime not related to immigration, and they say their resource sharing with ICE complies with both state and federal law. So how do you respond to that? What they’re saying is that this was within their rights under the federal law.
Simon: Yeah, so I just want to make clear that the ACLU of Oregon is not suing the Medford police currently for violating the sanctuary law.
Chávez: Yes, yes, I should be clear.
Simon: We are suing Medford police, yes, for monitoring social activists through social media and other things, and we have serious concerns about that. What I would say is the problem that I have with the way Medford approached this request from ICE is they asked questions after it became public. They didn’t ask questions before the request was fulfilled.
Chávez: Got it.
Simon: And so I think we have, whether, whether there was a violation in this one instance, what it shows is that law enforcement are quite easily able to sort of willfully ignore or negligently fail to do their due diligence in making sure that they’re complying with Oregon’s values and Oregon’s laws. So we have strong sanctuary laws. We have strong shield laws that protect things like the right to access an abortion, and our law enforcement shouldn’t be in the business of helping agencies that want to attack certain communities do their bidding.
Chávez: Yeah, and so it sounds like kind of what you’re maybe concerned about is this could be a bit of a slippery slope. I mean, aside from this one instance of this license plate check that the Medford police did, what makes you think that this is indicative of a broader problem or a broader culture of mass surveillance?
Simon: Yeah, so let me tell you a story about something that happened in Colorado and then I’ll kind of pull back and help talk through that mass surveillance network that we’re starting to see. But in Colorado there was a sheriff’s officer that was a part of a signal chat for the purpose of drug enforcement, but after conducting a traffic stop, that officer shared information about that driver on a signal thread and shortly thereafter, ICE, who was on that signal thread, arrested the driver, and they were put in deportation proceedings.
So this sort of centralization of communication, of technology, of agencies… We’re starting to see the walls break down between even the different law enforcement agencies that we have. That’s where we start to see the sort of mass policing machine and mass surveillance net that goes with that machine start to take form.
And I think that, especially in the moment that we’re in our country right now, we have to be concerned about who’s in power and who has the power to drive that machine. And so when we… Our country was founded on the notion that we have strong protections for our privacy. We have things like warrant requirements. We have things like the ability to control our local law enforcement at the local level through our local political processes, and we need to make sure that we’re protecting the integrity of these systems and these legal protections.
Chávez: So I want to go back to what I mentioned, that pending litigation, and thank you for pointing out that is actually not related to these recent revelations. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, because this is not the first time the Medford PD has been on y’all’s mind at ACLU of Oregon?
Simon: That’s right. We’re currently suing the Medford police for the surveillance of certain groups, social activist groups down in Medford, who are engaged in things like protesting on behalf of Black Lives in 2020. And I think Southern Oregon, when we’re talking about Southern Oregon, is also not new to our concerns around surveillance. We’ve seen the same sort of network of agencies engaged in surveillance of folks like the Jordan Cove pipeline protesters, and that was fueled by very high dollar amounts of corporate interests, hiring, paying for like a sheriff’s deputy.
And so this problem of surveillance, of interagency cooperation that sort of brings together state, local, and federal agencies, this is not a new problem and a new concern. But what is new is that the cooperation seems to be getting cozier, and the technology that they’re using seems to be getting more powerful. So when we think of tools like Flock, this is a system that it provides a centralized resource for law enforcement across the country to look at data that reveals, can reveal quite personal information about who we are based on where we drive, and they’re creating a centralized system that anyone can access.
ICE can access information from the West Coast by just going to the local police department in Illinois, for example. We’ve seen that happen. And so these tools are getting more powerful, the tools are getting more centralized. We’re seeing the federal government engage with companies like Palantir to start to centralize all the deeply intimate personal information that the federal government holds on each of us. And so again, we’re starting to just continue to see the march toward a more centralized and powerful police and surveillance network, without a lot of oversight, without a lot of transparency, and without a lot of accountability. And so what we need is our local law enforcement working with our communities to be accountable.
Chávez: Yeah, I heard you mention a moment ago something about that especially right now at this time, and I totally get that. How does the current federal administration factor into your thinking around this issue right now? Would you have the same concerns about this kind of resource sharing if there were different leadership at the federal level?
Simon: The ACLU and the ACLU of Oregon have had these concerns for a long time. We saw this sort of ramp up in interagency cooperation and invasive surveillance after 9/11, at the height of anti-Muslim sentiment. So this is a thing we’ve been concerned about from administration to administration. What is particularly concerning about this administration is the willingness to flout the law. So there is a concerted effort to flout the law. So that’s one concern in this particular administration.
Another concern is that we know that the Trump administration is seeking to mobilize these interagency bodies for the purpose of immigration enforcement, right? The Trump administration does not have the person power to be able to meet the numbers that they’ve committed to the American people of meeting. So they have to rely on local law enforcement and other sources of capacity to do what they say they’re gonna do.
We’ve seen executive orders like Protecting the American People Against Invasion, a quite heinous title, but what that does is create these homeland security task forces. So agencies like HSI, like we saw in this email, with the Medford police and the license plate check, those folks are not prioritizing the same things that they prioritized in prior administrations and instead immigration enforcement is being prioritized. So this, we can trust you all because we’ve worked with you before, or we know that what you’re doing is some sort of legitimate criminal investigation. That sort of trusting without verifying isn’t gonna cut it anymore.
Chávez: Well, Kelly Simon, thank you so much for joining me today and talking us through this, this recent development.
Simon: Thank you so much, Jenn.
Chávez: Kelly Simon is the legal director for the ACLU of Oregon.
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