PORTLAND,
Ore. (AP) — Protesters who have clashed with authorities in the Pacific
Northwest are not just confronting local police. Some are also facing
off against federal officers whose presence reflects President Donald
Trump’s decision to make cracking down on “violent mayhem” a federal priority.
The
Department of Homeland Security has deployed officers in tactical gear
from around the country, and from more than a half-dozen federal law
enforcement agencies and departments, to Portland, Oregon, as part of a
surge aimed at what a senior official said were people taking advantage
of demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd to commit violence and vandalism.
“Once
we surged federal law enforcement officers to Portland, the agitators
quickly got the message,” said the official, speaking on condition of
anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation.
The
deployment represents somewhat of a departure for DHS, which was
created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and is primarily focused on
threats from abroad and border security. During the Trump presidency,
its focus has been largely on carrying out the president’s tough
immigration agenda. Now it is in the role of supporting Trump’s
law-and-order campaign, raising questions about overstepping the duties
of local law enforcement.
Portland
Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis said his department did not request the
assistance and did not coordinate efforts with the federal government
amid often chaotic clashes that have ranged across several downtown blocks after midnight for weeks.
“I don’t have authority to order federal officers to do things,” Davis said. “It does complicate things for us.”
The DHS officers’ presence comes at an incredibly tense moment for Portland.
After Floyd’s death, the city for days saw marches and rallies that
attracted more than 10,000 generally peaceful Black Lives Matter
protesters to the downtown area. The police took a “mostly hands-off
approach” to those events because they were orderly, Davis said.
Civil
liberties advocates and activists have accused federal authorities of
overstepping their jurisdiction and excessive use of crowd-control
measures, including using tear gas and patrolling beyond the boundaries
of federal property. Portland police are prohibited from using tear gas
under a recent temporary court order unless they declare a riot.
“DHS
should go back to investigating the rise of white supremacist activity
and actors who are seeking to cause violence against these peaceful
protests, that is under the purview of the agency’s mission,” said
Andrea Flores, the deputy director of immigration policy at the American
Civil Liberties Union who was a DHS official during the Obama
administration.
Trump issued an executive order on June 26 to protect monuments
after protesters tried to remove or destroy statues of people
considered racist, including a failed attempt to pull down one of Andrew
Jackson near the White House.
The
president has denounced the Black Lives Matter movement and protests
calling for the removal of statues honoring racist figures, associating
peaceful protests with the sporadic outbursts of vandalism and looting
at some demonstrations. He referred to “the violent mayhem we have seen
in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats,” as well as
the “merciless campaign to wipe out our history,” in his July 3 Mount Rushmore speech.
Following
the executive order, DHS created the Protecting American Communities
Task Force and sent officers from Customs and Border Protection and
other agencies to Washington, D.C., Seattle and Portland. Others were
ready to deploy elsewhere if needed.
Improving
coordination among law enforcement agencies is part of DHS’s mission.
It also oversees the Federal Protective Service, which guards federal
government buildings around the nation.
But
the FPS doesn’t have the resources to respond to the kind of sustained
attacks that have taken place in Portland and elsewhere on the margins
of protests over the May 25 killing of Floyd in Minneapolis.
Federal
Protective Service Officer David Underwood was shot and killed outside a
federal building in Oakland during a protest in May. Authorities charged an Air Force staff sergeant affiliated with the far-right, anti-government “boogaloo” movement with his murder.
As
local governments in Washington, D.C., and Portland have stepped back
to allow space for peaceful demonstrations, the Trump administration has
stepped up its effort against what the senior official called
“opportunistic criminals.”
Attorney
General William Barr says there have been more than 150 arrests on
federal charges around the country, with about 500 investigations
pending related to recent protests. There were at least seven in
Portland in recent days.
Portland
police officials say the cycle of nightly attacks, which have shut down
much of the downtown, has been unprecedented. Early Thursday, a man in a
SUV fired several times into the air as he drove away from protesters
who had surrounded his car. “We’ve never seen this intensity of violence
and focused criminal activity over this long period of time,” Davis
said.
Among
the federal forces deployed in Portland are members of an elite Border
Patrol tactical team, a special operations unit that is based on the
U.S.-Mexico border and has been deployed overseas, including to Iraq and
Afghanistan.
BORTAC
members, identifiable by patches on their camouflage sleeves, are mixed
in with Federal Protective Service outside the courthouse. Others in
the unit, which includes snipers, have been stationed in “overlook”
positions on the courthouse’s ninth floor, where a protester in a black
hoodie shined a green laser into the eyes of one of the officers on
Monday, according to court documents.
The
night before, a BORTAC agent tackled and arrested a demonstrator
suspected of pointing a laser at him and others from a park across the
street from the courthouse.
A
former DHS official said BORTAC agents were viewed as “highly trained,
valuable, scarce resources” and would typically be used for domestic law
enforcement in extraordinary circumstances. “These units don’t normally
sit around idle,” said the official, who spoke on condition anonymity
because he no longer works at the agency, after serving under Trump and
President Barack Obama, and is not authorized to discuss operations.
“What did they get pulled off of in order to watch over statues?”
___
Fox reported from Washington.
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