A federal defense contractor is inquiring about reserving hundreds of hotel rooms on the Oregon coast for a year, the city of Newport said Tuesday. It’s the latest sign that a suspected effort to build an immigrant detention center on the coast has not gone away.

In a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Newport Mayor Jan Kaplan reported that the city had confirmed that a contractor called Team Housing Solutions “has called multiple hotels up and down the coast, as recently as this morning.” According to Kaplan, the organization was “looking for as many hotel rooms for a year.”

The announcement marks a new twist in a weekslong saga that has left many in Newport confused and outraged, and ramped up fear in local immigrant communities.

Team Housing Solutions is a Texas-based contractor

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