Activists and local leaders challenge illegal detentions by federal agents in Portland

Since late in the evening of Tues­day, July 14th, uni­formed and masked author­i­ties with­out iden­ti­fi­ca­tion have been peri­od­i­cal­ly detain­ing peo­ple at ran­dom in Port­land, Ore­gon, the Pacif­ic North­west­’s third largest urban cen­ter, ques­tion­ing them and releas­ing them after­ward with­out fil­ing any charges.

Peo­ple have jus­ti­fi­ably asked why these deten­tions are hap­pen­ing out of sync with demon­stra­tions and peri­od­ic attempts to spray paint or cause oth­er dam­age to fed­er­al facil­i­ties with­in Port­land over the last fifty days, why they are hap­pen­ing out­side of fed­er­al juris­dic­tion with­in Port­land, and why they are con­tin­u­ing despite suc­cess­ful efforts to pre­vent fur­ther van­dal­ism to pub­lic property.

The deten­tions were first report­ed by Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing on Thurs­day, July 16th, but fed­er­al author­i­ties in down­town Port­land have been tak­ing an aggres­sive stance since June 26th, when an exec­u­tive order was issued by Don­ald Trump’s White House to pro­tect nation­al mon­u­ments and buildings.

It’s the sec­ond time dur­ing Trump’s term that they have tak­en such a stance, the first being in June of 2018 when they cleared out a protest camp sur­round­ing South­west Port­land’s Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) headquarters.

On July 13th, Trump tweet­ed that fed­er­al author­i­ties were “doing a great job” in Port­land quelling protests. Port­land May­or Ted Wheel­er respond­ed on July 14th that the actions of fed­er­al law enforce­ment were unwelcome.

“The best thing they can do is stay inside their build­ing, or leave Port­land alto­geth­er… Our goal is to end these vio­lent demon­stra­tions quick­ly and safely.”

The ran­dom deten­tions start­ed short­ly thereafter.

On July 16th, act­ing Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Chad Wolf, one of the archi­tects of the “fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion” pol­i­cy at the bor­der, met with local law enforce­ment offi­cials, includ­ing the head of the Port­land police offi­cer union.

His offi­cial com­ments were best sum­ma­rized by his intro­duc­tion: “The city of Port­land has been under siege for forty-sev­en straight days by a vio­lent mob while local polit­i­cal lead­ers refuse to restore order to pro­tect their city. Each night, law­less anar­chists destroy and des­e­crate prop­er­ty, includ­ing the fed­er­al cour­t­house, and attack the brave law enforce­ment offi­cers pro­tect­ing it.”

May­or Wheel­er has, in response to Wolf’s com­ments, demand­ed that fed­er­al offi­cers be removed from Port­land immediately.

(The Port­land Police Bureau sub­se­quent­ly issued a state­ment that fed­er­al offi­cers would no longer be allowed inside the their com­mand center.)

Wheel­er also was no doubt try­ing to get out ahead of an ulti­ma­tum from one of his city com­mis­sion­ers, Jo Ann Hard­esty, after Port­land police coor­di­nat­ed an assault on demon­stra­tors on July 18th in tan­dem with fed­er­al author­i­ties, which result­ed in a counter-demon­stra­tion that led to a por­tion of the head­quar­ters of the Port­land Police Asso­ci­a­tion being set on fire,

Gov­er­nor Brown has also asked the Trump regime and act­ing Sec­re­tary Wolf to remove fed­er­al forces from Port­land, stat­ing in one arti­cle that “This polit­i­cal the­ater from Trump has noth­ing to do with pub­lic safe­ty… 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,” and stat­ing in a more recent inter­view that “There’s absolute­ly no ques­tion that by hav­ing the pres­ence of fed­er­al offi­cers here, it’s sim­ply like adding gaso­line to a fire.”

Ore­gon Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ellen Rosen­blum has filed a law­suit against DHS and has ini­ti­at­ed a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, stat­ing that their agents “have engaged in unlaw­ful law enforce­ment in vio­la­tion of the civ­il rights of Ore­go­ni­ans by seiz­ing and detain­ing them with­out prob­a­ble cause.”

On July 17th, Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley’s office released a let­ter, co-signed by Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Earl Blu­me­nauer and Suzanne Bonam­i­ci (all of whom rep­re­sent the greater Port­land area) to Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr and act­ing Home­land Secu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Chad Wolf, call­ing the actions of fed­er­al agents in the Port­land protests “out of con­trol” and “an abuse of power.”

That same day, the ACLU Foun­da­tion of Ore­gon sued the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty and U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice to block fed­er­al law enforce­ment from dis­pers­ing, arrest­ing, threat­en­ing to arrest, or using phys­i­cal force against jour­nal­ists or legal observers.

The U.S. Attor­ney for Ore­gon, Bil­ly J. Williams, is unsur­pris­ing­ly not being help­ful. Williams is call­ing for a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the deten­tions, but also imply­ing that the real cul­prit is antifa. “There are orga­ni­za­tions who are hell­bent on caus­ing prob­lems across the Unit­ed States – antifa being one of them,” he said. “There are oth­ers. Peo­ple need to wake up to this.”

And if the desired goal has been intim­i­da­tion of the pro­test­ers, that seems to have failed mis­er­ably. But one new ques­tion has arisen — is it DHS, ICE or Bor­der Patrol per­son­nel that has been detain­ing demon­stra­tors at random?

In a scoop by Willamette Week, it was found that at least some of the vehi­cles used to detain demon­stra­tors were rent­ed from a local Enter­prise Rent-A-Car facil­i­ty. Duties of fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cers are usu­al­ly car­ried out in tax­pay­er-owned vehi­cles that are des­ig­nat­ed for offi­cial use only.

So was some­one slop­py, or was some­one try­ing to fur­ther hide their tracks?

Or were they DHS, ICE or Bor­der Patrol per­son­nel at all?

One pos­si­bil­i­ty, not con­firmed: In recent demon­stra­tions in Wash­ing­ton D.C. in June, the Fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons used spe­cial oper­a­tions resource teams with­out iden­ti­fy­ing marks or badges to enforce the perime­ter around the White House. The Fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons has a cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty in Sheri­dan, some fifty miles from Port­land (which has been deal­ing with accu­sa­tions of ill treat­ment of its pris­on­ers in rela­tion to COVID-19 since at least March 31st).

They are bound by the nature of the facil­i­ty to have at least one such team in readi­ness in the event of an emer­gency at the cor­rec­tion­al facility.

The ques­tion remains: What agency is detain­ing peo­ple in Portland?

And on whose author­i­ty are they acting?