Black Lives Matter files suit to stop Trump’s agents from targeting city demonstrators
Black Lives Matter Chicago and other social justice groups filed suit Thursday against several federal law enforcement agencies seeking to prevent agents deployed in Chicago by President Donald Trump from harassing and detaining protesters.
The civil rights lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court comes a day after Trump said the federal officers would assist local police in reducing violent crime — and not form a camouflaged paramilitary strike force like the one that detained protesters in unmarked vans recently in Portland, Oregon. Trump, however, did not rule out a heavierhanded response in the future.
“We know the authoritarian tactics they have planned because of what they’ve been doing in Portland,” attorney Tess Kleinhaus, who filed the suit, said Thursday during a news conference downtown in Federal Plaza.
“The lawsuit is seeking injunctive relief to restrain federal law enforcement officers from violating the First and Fourth amendments of protesters, legal observers and journalists,” Kleinhaus added.
The First Amendment assures freedom of speech, while the Fourth Amendment protects from unreasonable search and seizure.
“They are trying to suppress our righteous anger, and we will not be suppressed, we will continue fighting back,” Aislinn Pulley, a founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago, told a crowd of about 150 demonstrators Thursday
“We see what’s happening in Portland, that was the first test case. And now it’s coming here,” Pulley claimed.
On Thursday, Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf told Fox News that the overarching federal initiative sending additional agents to Chicago “is focused on something very different than what’s going on in Portland.”
“What we’re talking about in Chicago is just that criminal activity that we see in the streets, whether it’s gang crime, illicit narcotics and drug crime and the like,” said Wolf, who is named as a defendant in the suit along with other federal officials.
“And so the Department of Justice, DEA, FBI and others, along with elements of the Department of Homeland Security, are working on those criminal investigations and those criminal activities every day. And they do that locally with law enforcement,” he added. “And I think that will continue to operate pretty well.”
The lawsuit comes amid a nationwide reckoning over racial injustice that has spurred mounting calls to cut funding for police departments and has prompted widespread protests — and in some cases rioting — in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.
In addition to Kleinhaus, of the law firm Loevy & Loevy, law clinics from the University of Chicago and Northwestern and other legal groups also worked on the suit. Black Lives Matter Chicago is lodging the complaint alongside a coalition that includes the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America and other local activist groups.