Federal 'occupying force' to pull out of Portland, Oregon governor announces
The Trump administration is to withdraw federal law enforcement agents out of Portland, Oregon, beginning on Thursday, the state’s governor announced on Wednesday, slamming officers she said “acted as an occupying force and brought violence” in several nights of violent clashes with local protesters .
Signs were emerging early Wednesday that the pull-out could be on the way after accusations that Donald Trump was deploying paramilitary forces in violation of the US constitution, partly as a tactic in his provocative “law and order” re-election campaign.
On Wednesday morning, Governor Kate Brown posted a tweet that agents from federal border patrol and immigration agencies, which fall under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, would begin withdrawal on Thursday.
She gave no initial details of whether or how local law enforcement would increase their presence in the city, after the president and vice-president indicated that would be a condition of agreeing to a federal withdrawal.
Mike Pence, the vice-president, had told the Fox News Channel late on Tuesday the administration was talking with Oregon’s Democratic governor,
Kate Brown. He did not provide details.
Earlier, the Associated Press, citing an unidentified White House official, reported on Wednesday the Trump administration held out the possibility of drawing down the federal troop presence if the state stepped up its own enforcement.
Trump said at the White House earlier in the day that the federal presence would remain for now.
“We’re not leaving until they secure their city. We told the governor, we told the mayor: secure your city,” Trump said, repeating his threat to send more federal officers if the situation gets worse.
The federal government has deployed teams of agents, at times heavily armed and clad in camouflage, to the Portland protests, drawing criticism from Democrats and civil liberties groups who allege excessive force and federal overreach.
Brown and Portland’s mayor, both Democrats, have complained they never asked for the federal agents and their presence was worsening the situation with protesters.
“The violence in Portland has got to stop. It is clear that the local leadership and the mayor of Portland are not willing to step up. That’s why we’re talking to Governor Kate Brown and the state of Oregon about working a way forward,” Pence told Fox.
Tuesday night was the 62nd consecutive night of protests in downtown Portland and the 28th night of confrontations with federal officers. The demonstrations began, in tune with scores of other cities around America, in the wake of the death in police custody of George Floyd as a statement about police brutality.
But on 1 July, the nature of the events started to shift when federal forces began to gather more visibly around the US courthouse. The forces, led by agents of border patrol, acted ostensibly to protect federal property but as the confrontation intensified were criticized for acting like paramilitary forces including arresting protesters and placing them in unmarked vans.
On Tuesday night, the head-to-head between demonstrators and the federal agents was relatively restrained, according to the local newspaper the Oregonian. But a familiar pattern repeated itself after midnight when agents dressed in desert camouflage unleashed teargas, pepper spray and flash bangs in response to a couple of fireworks being ignited on the other side of the perimeter fence.
Civil liberties groups have complained that the actions of the federal agents are disproportionate to the crowd control challenges they face. Their deployment has stoked unrest that appeared to be fading before the officers arrived.
With the distorting presence of the federal agents, the focus of the protests, especially in the early hours of the morning, has switched from supporting Black Lives Matters towards venting anger at Trump. “I wanted to stand up to Trump. We’re sick of this man and the damage he’s done,” a demonstrator told the Guardian.
Currently there are thought to be about 114 federal officers deployed at the Portland courthouse.
On Monday, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indicated they were about to boost the size of the unit with 40 more border agents and about 100 deputy US Marshals.
Trump has also talked in aggressive terms about extending the use of what critics call federal paramilitaries to several other cities including Chicago, New York and Albuquerque. It is not incidental in an election year that all the cities he has targeted are Democraticcontrolled.
By contrast, in Seattle, US border patrol agents sent supposedly to protect federal buildings appear to have quietly been pulled out of the city. The deployment had been fiercely resisted by the governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, and Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan.
The federal action has provoked several lawsuits trying to stop it on constitutional grounds in Portland. On Tuesday a new suit was lodged by the American Civil Liberties Union complaining about ongoing assaults by US agents on journalists and legal observers.
A court order was obtained on 23 July imposing a temporary restraining order on the border patrol and other federal agents from roughly handling reporters. But the new lawsuit contends that “within hours federal agents began violating the court’s order and have continued to do so every night since”.
The lawsuit argues that “these violations are not inadvertent. They are intentional acts by a lawless president who has sent his paramilitary forces to shoot up the streets of Portland.”
Among the assaults cited in the suit are a journalist who was shot and teargassed while trying to video an arrest, and a legal observer shot in her chest from just four feet away. Another photojournalist was shot even though she had “PRESS” clearly stamped on her helmet.
On Wednesday morning, before the Oregon governor’s tweet, the justice department said it would send dozens of law enforcement officers to Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit to combat violent crime.
The move follows similar deployments to Chicago, Kansas City, Missouriand Albuquerque, New Mexico, under what is known as Operation Legend, although the initiative has been conflated with anti-racism protests.