Oregon Public Broadcasting is reporting that over the last few days, “federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protestors.” Chillingly, the federal officer are dressed in camouflage, are both armed and armored, and have no insignia to indicate who they work for; they are also reportedly not identifying themselves when arresting their targets.
OPB interviewed two people who underwent this experience. One of them, Mark Pettibone, described being “tossed” into a van; those detaining him pulled his cap over his eyes and held his hands over his head, apparently so he would not be able to see. He was brought to a location that he subsequently realized was the federal courthouse, where he declined to answer questions without an attorney present. He was not informed as to why he had been arrested. After an hour and a half, he was released without being charged for a crime.
OPB also reports that “officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.”
This is an instance where videos of the incidents may be the most effective way of communicating how very sinister and grossly inappropriate these federal actions are. I have to admit that the first time one came up in my Twitter feed, I was sure it was either a parody of federal law enforcement gone wrong, or a video of Russian actions in Crimea or some other site of paramilitary mayhem.
The Department of Homeland Security has been coordinating the deployment of federal agents in Portland, including elements of a Border Patrol tactical team that has also been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the U.S. Marshals Service Special Operations Group. Last Saturday, a member of the latter group shot a peaceful protestor in the face with a non-lethal munition, fracturing his skull; the man remains hospitalized.
As the abductions began being reported more widely, acting Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf visited Portland on Thursday; a DHS statement released in connection with his trip here strongly reinforces the case being made by many, including Greg Sargent at the Washington Post and local politicos like Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, that the activities of federal agents in Portland have very little to do with any actual need for their presence, and very much to do with President Trump’s desperate re-election effort to create an impression of an America besieged by widespread violence:
The city of Portland has been under siege for 47 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.
A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice - to attack it is to attack America. Instead of addressing violent criminals in their communities, local and state leaders are instead focusing on placing blame on law enforcement and requesting fewer officers in their community. This failed response has only emboldened the violent mob as it escalates violence day after day.
The hysterical, exaggerated assertions of mayhem and violence, rather than accurately describing reality, are meant to distort it, as well as to incite fear and anger in the reader. “Siege,” “violent mob,” “lawless anarchists”: these words and phrases promote a funhouse mirror version of reality, in which Portland has supposedly been brought to its knees by wilding antifa types. My personal favorite element of this inversion is the reference to those who “desecrate property,” as if all property were sacred ground, like a church or a Trump hotel.
The impression that the DHS release is less a statement of facts than poorly-written propaganda grows as you read the seemingly endless list of offenses cited by Wolf; the phrase “Violent anarchists” kicks off nearly every one of the dozens of incidents, as if repetition alone will make the unsupported label true. In this, it is a very Trumpian document indeed. The fact that around half the incidents of alleged violence consist of graffiti on federal buildings projects a sense not of menace, but an effort by Wolf to juke the statistics in favor of crackdown. And the fetishization of symbols may be most absurd in his statement that, “A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice - to attack it is to attack America,” to which the obvious retort is that if this is so, then shooting and abducting peaceful American protestors is also attacking America, on steroids.
You can’t overstate how inappropriate it is for the man charged with heading the Department of Homeland Security to talk about small scale demonstrations in Portland as an existential danger to the city requiring both federal mobilization and the language of war. The DHS was created to help protect the United States against external threats, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 being the catalyst for its very existence. Yet, we now have the man charged with coordinating America’s domestic security efforts acting as if graffiti, broken glass, and isolated assaults on police and federal agents by American citizens constitute an attack on America itself. A man unable to distinguish between actual threats to domestic security and non-existent ones has no place holding such a job; the same is doubly the case when he promulgates a false narrative about such threats. In doing so, he reveals himself not as a public servant protecting Americans’ safety, but as a dangerous ideologue promoting the authoritarian vision and illicit re-election strategy of an unmoored president.
The absurdity of Wolf’s claims is clear to most anyone who actually lives in Portland. While Wolf promotes an idea of a city under “siege,” residents are aware that the protests involving federal buildings are limited to a few square blocks of downtown, where those buildings actually are. The city of Portland spreads across 145 square miles. Wolf is lying, and we know it. There is also the uncomfortable (for Wolf) fact that crime has actually declined in Portland over the last several weeks.
But the attempts by the Trump administration to gin up a false narrative of a city under attack by anarchist hordes is most vividly contradicted by city and state officials’ vehement assertions that the federal presence is not welcome in the city, and that federal forces are in fact committing and perpetuating violence here. From Governor Kate Brown and Representative Earl Blumenauer, to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, we are hearing a consistent message that the federal agents should not be in Portland. And it’s not just elected Democrats saying this. Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese stated that, “the actions by out-of-state federal agents last weekend failed to display good decision making and sound tactical judgment [. . .] These actions caused a significant setback in our local efforts to end the nightly violence around the Justice Center and in Portland”; meanwhile, according to Mother Jones, Portland Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis noted that the Portland Police Bureau “did not request federal assistance and is not coordinating with the federal officers; Davis is quoted as saying, “I don’t have authority to order federal officers to do things. It does complicate things for us.”
In the last 24 hours, news of these federal abuses have exploded across the national media (this afternoon, it was a top story at both the New York Times and Washington Post websites). Even as the president believes he has much to gain by creating an impression of dire conflict so as to arouse his most fervent, Fox News-addicted followers, the majority of Americans will find the activities of federal agents in Portland to be beyond the pale. Some commentators have already drawn parallels between what we are seeing here and the activities of the Pinochet regime, which “disappeared” thousands of Chileans, and of Russia under Vladimir Putin, which deployed troops without national identification to mount a covert invasion of Ukraine. Given the white nationalist and authoritarian agenda of the president and his advisors, it would be naïve to think that they aren’t aware of these precedents, and either find inspiration in them or are indifferent to the dark resonance they carry for patriotic Americans.
But alongside exposure, this violent intervention in the affairs of an American city demands a concrete response that shuts it down and holds the perpetrators to account, from the agents following orders to treat peaceful protestors like hardened criminals, all the way up to the incompetent Chad Wolf and his flailing commander-in-chief; all have broken faith with basic notions of freedom and accountability in the deployment of what amounts to a secret police force acting to terrorize legitimate protestors into submission. It is reassuring that Democratic officials in Oregon are largely united in identifying these activities as reflecting a presidential effort to energize his base, but they must follow up their outraged words with concrete action to end these illegitimate federal actions ASAP. As a start, elected Democrats need to call for Chad Wolf’s immediate resignation. As a defender of police state tactics and as a fantasist of a looming “anarchist” menace, he’s unworthy of his position; as the coordinator of such tactics, what he actually is worthy of is congressional investigation. Likewise, federal agents who violate the civil rights of American citizens deserve neither the benefit nor the honor of public service, and should be removed from Portland immediately.