Police confront protesters in Portland. Photo: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service deployed federal law enforcement officers to Portland, Oregon, to crack down on ongoing protests in the city.
As a result, over the past few weeks, demonstrators in Portland have had to contend with not only the local police force — which has been aggressively trying to quash the protests with tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests — but also federal agents, who, according to recent reports, have been employing violent and constitutionally dubious tactics against protesters, including firing “less-than-lethal” munitions into crowds, and driving around the city in unmarked vans to yank protesters off the streets.
Mark Pettibone, a Portland resident who was hauled into a van by federal officers as he was walking home from a protest in the early hours of July 15, told the Washington Post: “I was terrified. It seemed like it was out of a horror/sci-fi, like a Philip K. Dick novel. It was like being preyed upon.”
On Twitter, photos and videos of the heavy federal police presence in the streets of Portland went viral, and by Friday morning, the word “fascism” was trending nationwide. City officials in Portland, meanwhile, have expressed concern about the influx of federal law enforcement, saying that they did not request assistance from federal agencies, and that the presence of the federal troops has only served to escalate an already tense situation. On Saturday, police declared a riot after protesters set fire to the Portland Police Association building, with local and federal officers deploying extreme force against demonstrators.
Below, what we know about the situation in Portland.
Videos from recent protests show officers in what appear to be military fatigues driving around Portland in unmarked minivans, and arresting demonstrators without apparent cause.
Mark Pettibone told Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) that he was forced into one such van in the early hours of Wednesday, July 15, when he and a friend were walking home from a peaceful protest outside the federal courthouse.
“I am basically tossed into the van,” Pettibone said. “And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see, and they held my hands over my head.”
Pettibone said there were several officers in the van with him, all of them in camouflage and body armor, and they wouldn’t identify themselves. After driving him around for a while, they took him to a building that he wouldn’t learn until he was released was the federal courthouse. Officers patted him down, took his picture, went through his things, and then put him in a cell. Later, two officers came in and asked him if would like to waive his Miranda rights and answer questions. Pettibone declined, the officers left, and he was released about an hour and a half later.
Pettibone said he could not think of anything he had done that could serve as grounds for arrests, nor did he receive any paperwork, citation, or record of his arrest.
When reached for comment by OPB, U.S. Marshals Service said it had not arrested Pettibone. DHS did not comment on his arrest.
Another video, posted on July 15, shows two federal officers in full tactical gear approaching a protester who is standing on the sidewalk with her hands up. They put the protester’s hands behind her back, and force her into a van waiting across the street, ignoring bystanders as they yell, “What are you doing? Where are you taking her?”
On Friday, in a statement addressing its recent seizure of pedestrians, the CBP said, “CBP agents had information indicating the person in the video was suspected of assaults against federal agents or destruction of federal property.”
“Once CBP agents approached the suspect, a large and violent mob moved towards their location,” the statement continued. “For everyone’s safety, CBP agents quickly moved the suspect to a safer location for further questioning. The CBP agents identified themselves and were wearing CBP insignia during the encounter. The names of the agents were not displayed due to recent doxing incidents against law enforcement personnel who serve and protect our country.”
Donavan LaBella, 26, was hospitalized and suffered skull fractures after federal officials shot him in the face with “less-than-lethal” ammunition at a protest in downtown Portland on the night of Saturday, July 11.
LaBella’s mother told Oregon Live that her son required facial reconstruction surgery following the attack. “He still has a tube in his skull to drain the blood,” she said Sunday morning.
Portland mayor Ted Wheeler said on the night of July 12 that the U.S. Marshal Service would conduct an investigation into the incident.
Ever since protests against racism and police brutality first erupted following the killing of George Floyd earlier this year, President Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to crack down on demonstrators. In his speeches, the president has referred to protesters as “thugs” and “terrorists,” and expressed a desire for “retribution.”
On June 26, after protesters attempted to pull down a statue of Andrew Jackson that sits in the park across from the White House, President Trump signed an executive order to protect monuments, memorials, and statues.
In response, DHS formed the Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT).
“DHS is answering the president’s call to use our law enforcement personnel across the country to protect our historic landmarks,” acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement on July 1. “We won’t stand idly by while violent anarchists and rioters seek not only to vandalize and destroy the symbols of our nation, but to disrupt law and order and sow chaos in our communities.” In a statement Wolf issued on Thursday, July 16, he described protesters as a “violent mob” of “lawless anarchists” who had laid “siege” to federal property.
Per the AP, the PACT task force sent officers from Customs and Border Protection and other agencies like the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group, to Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. According to a July 16 memo prepared for Wolf in advance of his arrival in Portland, however, these officers — outfitted as if for war, and assigned to various federal sites around the city — may not have undergone training appropriate to their current assignment. “Moving forward, if this type of response is going to be the norm, specialized training and standardized equipment should be deployed to responding agencies,” the memo notes. As the New York Times reports, the DHS appears to have pulled from agencies that investigate drug cartels, for example, and lack experience managing large crowds of protesters in cities.
On Saturday, these officers met protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse. The Oregonian reports that it was “unclear” whether or not federal forces or local police deployed tear gas — a substance that, per recent legislation, law enforcement may only use during riots in Oregon — against protesters, but footage tweeted by a Portland Tribune reporter shows federal officers in gas masks and camouflage beating a protester with batons and pepper spraying him directly in the face. The protester did not react, standing still as the officers swarmed and then walking away.
Oregon’s Attorney General, Ellen Rosenblum, filed a lawsuit against the DHS, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protection Service, and their agents late Friday night. “They have engaged in unlawful law enforcement in violation of the civil rights of Oregonians by seizing and detaining them without probable cause,” a press release contends, citing LaBella and Pettibone’s cases.
In a statement, Rosenblum called the federal government’s tactics “entirely unnecessary.”
“They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully. They also create a more volatile situation on our streets,” Rosenblum said. “The federal administration has chosen Portland to use their scare tactics to stop our residents from protesting police brutality and from supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening. If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere.”
The ACLU Foundation of Oregon is also suing the federal government, having filed its own lawsuit against the DHS and the U.S. Marshalls Service on Friday. The suit seeks to block federal agents from “arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force directed against any person whom they know or reasonably should know is a Journalist or Legal Observer” who has committed no crime.
In response to LaBella’s shooting, Oregon governor Kate Brown condemned President Trump for “continuing to push for force and violence in response to protests.” She added, “The cycle of violence must end.”
In a statement to the Washington Post, Portland city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said, “I am proud to be among the loud chorus of elected officials calling for the federal troops in Portland’s streets to go home.” She continued, “Their presence here has escalated tensions and put countless Portlanders exercising their First Amendment rights in greater danger.”
Ted Wheeler, Portland’s mayor, characterized the officers as the president’s “personal army,” according to the Washington Post. “This is part of a coordinated strategy of Trump’s White House to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data, and it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials,” he said. “As we were starting to see things de-escalate, their actions … have actually ratcheted up the tension on our streets.”
President Trump, meanwhile, praised the work of the federal troops, saying in a press conference on Monday: “We’ve done a great job in Portland. Portland was totally out of control, and they went in, and I guess we have many people right now in jail. We very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we’ll quell it again very easily. It’s not hard to do, if you know what you’re doing.” On Saturday night, he reportedly tweeted — and then deleted — a gloating celebration of federal agents’ tactics: “Oregon officials are running scared when it comes to Portland.”
He later revised that sentiment to: “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!”
On Friday morning, as “fascism” trended across the country, some politicians and commentators accused Trump of deploying a “secret police force.”
Those condemnations have only escalated in light of this weekend’s brutal police response, with U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley tweeting that he and Sen. Ron Wyden would be “introducing an amendment to the defense bill … to stop the Trump administration from sending its paramilitary squads onto America’s streets.”
Zakir Khan, a spokesman for the Oregon chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Washington Post he thought the Trump administration was trying to test the limits of executive power: “I think Portland is test case. They want to see what they can get away with before launching into other parts of the country.”
This article has been updated throughout.
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