The U.S. Coast Guard must immediately return a rescue helicopter to the city of Newport as a court case challenging the aircraft’s removal gets underway, a federal judge has ruled.

In an opinion issued Monday evening, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken found that the sudden relocation of the helicopter last month could imperil lives as crabbing season gets underway, and that the Coast Guard had not provided legally required notice before moving the aircraft nearly 100 miles south to North Bend.

While the federal government has yet to offer an explanation in court for its actions – and the Coast Guard has said it is still able to adequately respond to emergencies on the coast – Aiken wrote that “Newport fishermen and the community at large will face serious danger due to the lack of rescue helicopter coverage.”

The order remains in effect for 14 days, though Aiken will also consider a permanent injunction barring the removal of the helicopter. The Oregonian/OregonLive first reported the restraining order news on Monday evening.

“This is good news and a great relief for our coastal communities,” said state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, who represents Newport in the state House. “Fishermen will be safer, at least temporarily. We look forward to a permanent decision very soon.”

The development lands just three days after a suit filed by the nonprofit Newport Fishermen’s Wives and Lincoln County challenging the helicopter’s removal. But it comes weeks into a mystery that has confounded and angered many in Newport, a major fishing and crabbing enclave on the state’s central coast.

The U.S. Coast Guard has stationed a rescue helicopter in Newport since 1987, not long after three fishermen died when their boat capsized roughly 20 miles off the central coast. The Coast Guard considered removing the aircraft in 2014, but ultimately backed off in the face of public outcry.

A law passed after that fight bars the Coast Guard from closing air bases unless it determines public safety won’t be impacted, and requires the agency to provide notice and accept public comment before making a change.

But the Coast Guard removed its helicopter from a base at the Newport Municipal Airport in late October without telling anyone in the community. Around the same time, federal defense contractors began making inquiries about leasing land around the airport. Want ads appeared for detention officers who could work for a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

Those developments have led many in Newport to conclude the Trump administration is eyeing their city for an immigration detention center as it ramps up deportation efforts. Oregon is one of a handful of states without such a facility.

But ICE, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard have offered few details about why, precisely, the helicopter was moved.

Aiken said in her ruling she could “discern no hardship to [the Coast Guard] in an injunction requiring them to continue operating the Newport Air Facility as they have for the better part of four decades.”

Newport touts itself as the “Dungeness crab capital of the world,” and is preparing for the start of a crabbing season in mid-December that often proves dangerous. The Newport Fishermen’s Wives, the nonprofit that helped file suit last week, supports families when their loved ones die at sea.

The state of Oregon has also weighed into the drama in Newport, filing a lawsuit of its own on Monday.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/24/us-coast-guard-must-return-rescue-helicopter-to-newport-judge-rules/