Our Position on ICE Activity

As an urban planning team, Crescent Consulting believes in public engagement. We know that gathering feedback from the communities we are planning with and for and incorporating that feedback directly into our work is crucial to the planning practice. In this time where violence, targeting, and persecutions of our neighbors are escalating exponentially, we cannot blithely continue as though this is not occurring. We have a deep responsibility to serve our public—who do we plan for otherwise? 

This project is conducted by second year students in the Masters in Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program at Portland State University (PSU). As part of our final project for this program we have partnered with Historic Parkrose to assess vacant or underutilized sites in the Parkrose commercial district (along NE Sandy Blvd) and provide recommendations for primarily economic opportunity and development in the area. 

Oregon is a sanctuary state, Portland State is a sanctuary school. Besides our personal values we also have institutional support to not comply with federal ICE activity. 

As MURP students we are learning. In our final workshop projects, we have the flexibility to design our community engagement process which we are exercising to our full extent. While we have heard that the Parkrose neighborhood is not a very active area for ICE activity, that does not mean it will stay that way or we won’t encounter a situation with ICE. If that happens, we want to be prepared. 

We commit: 

• To put Parkrose’s residents and neighbors safety first and foremost. 

• To not work with ICE for any reason. 

• To design our public involvement in the best ways we can to protect our participants. 

• To clearly share this document and our stance on this topic in our public engagement marketing materials. 

• To have all our team members attend one Migra Watch Training and use the provided training to guide our conduct for the potential situations listed below. 

• To respond promptly (within 24 hours) of a question to our team. Please contact us at jujones@pdx.edu if you have any questions. 

We also commit to following the procedures below if need arises: 

• In the event of spotting potential ICE agents, we: 

  • Call the PIRC hotline (888-622-1510) and report the activity. We follow the instructions from the hotline staffer. 

  • If we are uncertain, we call their non-emergency line (971-940-9053) and check. 

• In the event of spotting confirmed ICE agents, we: 

  • Will decide what capacity we have/are operating in that moment. 

  • Can proceed following the questions and instructions from the Migra Watch Training. Our goal would be to document, not escalate. 

• In the event of spotting ICE agents in the act of detaining someone, we: 

  • Will assess the situation, risks, and determine what each other’s comfort levels are for intervention. 

  • May proceed following the questions and instructions from the Migra Watch Training. We want to document, not escalate. 

  • When we document, we follow the advice shared in this video and from the training. 

Signed, 

Crescent Consulting Team 

Rowan Anderson, Julia Cruz-Jones, Akasha Lawrence-Spence, Clara Lietz, and Cal Storrs

Please reach out to jujones@pdx.edu if you have any questions!