Agents quelling protests urged to don uniforms

Call rises for them to shed camo, be ID’d as law officers

WASHINGTON — As authorities crack down on protests in Portland, Ore., military leaders, lawmakers and former government officials have intensified calls for federal officers to shed the camouflage and return to wearing uniforms that clearly identify them as law enforcement.

The mobilization of federal agents in military-style camouflage in recent days and their use of unmarked vans to make arrests has deepened confusion about which force is doing what.

Mark Morgan, the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, pushed back against assertions that his officers were difficult to identify. They had agency patches and police emblazoned on their vests, he told reporters Tuesday, but their names were removed to protect their identities after officers were doxed, meaning their private, identifying information was released online.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies should not allow their officers to wear camouflage.

“They need to stop this charade and stop pretending they’re the military. They need to put their ICE uniforms and CBP uniforms back on,” he told The Washington Post, referring to federal immigration officers, and Customs and Border Protection.

The public has at turns mistaken police for soldiers since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May triggered demonstrations and civil unrest. Defense Secretary Mark Esper was concerned about that conflation during protests in Washington last month, his chief spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, said Tuesday.

“We want a system where people can tell the difference,” he said, adding that Esper has expressed those concerns within the Trump administration.

“It’s not good for our democracy,” David Lapan, a former Marine officer who served as Department of Homeland Security spokesman under Trump in 2017, told The Post. “The public should not feel there is a militarized response to civil unrest.”

Federal officers in the District of Columbia, Portland and elsewhere have worn what is generally called the operational camouflage pattern, or multicam — a smattering of brown, green and beige daubs.

It is also what National Guardsmen typically wore on the streets of Washington last month during protests, with federal officers often in similar patterns. The soldiers and police intermixed, and sometimes swapped gear, further spreading confusion.

Customs and Border Protection has defended the use of the camouflage and said it was not aware of any confusion.

“This is the standard uniform for these agents and has been since 2015,” Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. “It is a pattern chosen to be appropriate for any operational environment.”

But former officials and lawmakers said the uniforms can chip away at the image of the military, which enjoys the highest level of trust of any public institution.

The use of Customs and Border Protection and other agencies as a de facto national police force could erode that trust, said Carrie Cordero, a former Justice Department national security attorney and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.

“An agency in military-style uniforms pulling people off the streets is a place we don’t want to be,” she said. The solution for the Department of Homeland Security is simple, she said — return to duty uniforms. Customs and Border Protection officers are already well-known for being in blue uniforms, while Border Patrol, for instance, wears green.

Three House Democrats issued a statement saying the federal officers in Portland may “sully the reputation” of service members.

Gallego said perceptions of the military’s involvement in breaking up protests can have long-lasting effects.

Young people loosely following the protests and the use of force are in the prime recruiting age for the military, he said, and if the conflation endures, “they’re not going to view the military as an organization to protect your rights.”

Limiting the scope of the Department of Homeland Security authority and the mission, and instituting training that emphasizes de-escalation could be places to start, he said — along with clearly presented uniforms — following initial confusion of which agencies were on the streets in Portland.

“There needs to be accountability,” Gallego said. “We’re not going to have that with people hiding who they are.” Information for this article was contributed by Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post.