Newberg resident urges council to speak out after recent ICE arrests

During public comment the Newberg City Council meeting, resident Elaine Coskela described arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that she said included two vineyard workers taken in Newberg and a related family detention in Cottage Grove. She asked the council to speak for the community, protect residents and support pathways to legal status for local workers.

Coskela identified herself as a former Newberg Schools employee and said news that “ICE has come to Newberg and is causing fear and, for some, lasting trauma and harm.” She said the two vineyard workers taken in Newberg “neither had any criminal record” and recounted an account from Cottage Grove in which a father self-deported to Guatemala with his child after an ICE enforcement action at a school contact.

Coskela called the enforcement approach “the show and the terror” and said there was “no need for masked men to pick people up from the street, from their places of work, from churches, from schools.” She asked the council and the wider Yamhill County community to “pull together to speak for everyone in Yamhill County” and to consider supporting legal pathways for workers.

Mayor Rosacker and council members received the public comment; the item was offered as public testimony and no formal council action was taken during the meeting. The concerns were entered into the public record for council consideration.