Oregon voters defeated Measure 105, keeping in place the state's 31-year-old sanctuary state law.
Proponents of the measure claimed the sanctuary law emboldens undocumented immigrants to commit crimes and ties the hands of law enforcement.
Opponents said the law prevents racial profiling, saying if the law was repealed, immigrant communities and people of color will feel unsafe and too frightened to report crimes to police out of fear of deportation.
Oregon's law — the first sanctuary state law in the United States — traces back decades to a long-closed restaurant in a small town outside Salem.
In January 1977, Delmiro Trevino, a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, was eating with his friends at the Hi-Ho Restaurant in Independence when he was approached by an Independence police officer and three Polk County sheriff's deputies, who grabbed his arm and interrogated him about his immigration status.
The officers relented after another officer identified Trevino as a longtime resident of Independence.
Embarrassed and angered, Trevino contacted Salem attorney Rocky Barilla, who later filed a class action lawsuit accusing the officers of acting on behalf of the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, now known as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
When Barilla joined the Oregon Legislature in 1986, he sought to correct this distrust and fear in the community.
He co-sponsored a bill forbidding state agencies, including law enforcement, from using state resources or personnel to arrest people whose only crime was being in the country illegally.
The bill passed both houses almost unanimously and became Oregon Revised Statute 181A.820.