More federal agents in Seattle; mayor says ‘this is frightening’

SEATTLE — More federal agents have been dispatched to Seattle to protect federal property amid lingering unrest in the city following the shutdown of a protest zone where demonstrators camped for weeks during George Floyd protests.

The agents are with a special response team of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said she felt she was misled by Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, who she said told her that the U.S. government had no plans to send federal agents to Seattle.

“I don’t want to say I was lied to, but I think there was maybe semantics that weren’t forthcoming,” Durkan said Friday.

Durkan urged people to protest peacefully over the weekend at planned rallies that are likely to be large. She also said she hoped to avoid what is happening in Portland, which has seen ongoing clashes between demonstrators and federal police.

“I cannot overstate it enough, what is happening is frightening to me,” Durkan said. “It is frightening that you would use federal agents for political purposes.”

The agents sent to Seattle are on standby to help other federal law enforcement officials protect federal facilities in the city, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the plans who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the operation publicly.

The agents arrived after businesses in Seattle were vandalized in the downtown area and in the nearby Capitol Hill neighborhood. A small section of Capitol Hill was occupied last month by the protesters and turned into the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone.

Demonstrators took over the several block area for about two weeks until authorities returned in force and cleared out the area on July 1 after two fatal shootings.

King County Executive Dow Constantine tweeted Thursday that a federal plane landed at an airport in Seattle that evening and that “more than a dozen personnel drove off to an unknown destination.”

President Donald Trump’s administration has also announced that agents would be sent to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico.