Camouflaged federal officers deployed by President Donald Trump to Portland, Oregon are, by all accounts, operating as if the city is a police state, according to multiple reports and videos.
Footage posted online show the unidentified federal officers using unmarked cars to grab protesters and arrest them, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported late Thursday night. Two protesters said they were walking home after a relatively tame night of protests on July 15 when a minivan suddenly pulled up in front of them.
A video posted earlier this week showed unidentified federal officers in camouflage on the street arresting a protester who had their hands up.
Lawyer Juan Chavez, who serves as director of the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center in Portland, compared the feds’ tactics to “abduction” and “kidnapping people off the streets.”
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“It’s like stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay,” he said.
Last weekend, an unarmed protester was standing across the street and holding a speaker in when federal agents shot him in the head with nonlethal munitions, rendering him bloody and unconscious, and resulting in facial and skull fractures.
President Trump and administration officials have praised federal law enforcement’s actions in Portland who’ve claimed that Portland officials and local police couldn’t handle the protests.
But Oregon’s Democratic governor and other state lawmakers are demanding that President Donald Trump immediately remove all federal law enforcement officials from the streets of Portland after alarming video footage posted online late Thursday showed unidentified officers dressed in combat fatigues arresting Black Lives Matter protesters without explanation and throwing them into unmarked vehicles.
“This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said in a statement. “The president is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government.”
“These shadowy forces have been escalating, not preventing, violence. If Wolf is coming here to inflame the situation so Donald Trump can look like a tough guy, he should turn around and leave our city now,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley
Brown said she told Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to “remove all federal officers from our streets” but he refused, claiming that Portland “has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob.”
Wolf’s response, said Brown, shows “he is on a mission to provoke confrontation for political purposes. He is putting both Oregonians and local law enforcement officers in harm’s way.”
“This, coming from the same President who used tear gas to clear out peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C. to engineer a photo opportunity,” she added.
Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday that “federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14.”
“Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off,” OPB reported.
In response to one such video, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tweeted that “authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters.”
“These Trump/Barr tactics designed to eliminate any accountability are absolutely unacceptable in America, and must end,” Merkley added.
Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters. These Trump/Barr tactics designed to eliminate any accountability are absolutely unacceptable in America, and must end. pic.twitter.com/PE4YfZ9Vqd
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) July 16, 2020
On Thursday night, federal law enforcement officials fired tear gas and impact munitions into crowds of demonstrators gathered in Portland to protest the police killing of George Floyd.
“In recent weeks, the federal government has deployed to Portland a number of DOJ and DHS officers,” the lawmakers wrote. “This politically driven federal response is intolerable.”
Jann Carson, interim executive director of the ACLU of Oregon, said in a statement Friday that “what is happening now in Portland should concern everyone in the United States.”
“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping,” said Carson. “The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”
“Protesters in Portland have been shot in the head, swept away in unmarked cars, and repeatedly tear-gassed by uninvited and unwelcome federal agents,” Carson added. “We won’t rest until they are gone.”
