Clashes Erupt in Portland As More Federal Agents Dispatched to City (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Trump administration is sending more federal agents to Portland, Ore., already the site of aggressive policing tactics that activists and city officials across the country say are inspiring more-violent clashes and re-energizing protests.
The US Marshals Service decided last week to send more deputies to Portland, according to an internal email reviewed by The Washington Post, with personnel beginning to arrive last Thursday night. The Department of Homeland Security is also considering a plan to send an additional 50 US Customs and Border Protection personnel to the city, according to senior administration officials involved in the federal response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, the Washington Post reported.
Such moves would mark a significant expansion of the federal force operating at the Portland federal courthouse — there were 114 federal agents there in mid-July — though it is unclear how many existing personnel could be sent home after the arrival of at least 100 reinforcements, according to internal Marshals emails.
The Trump administration has responded to protests and vandalism in Oregon’s largest city with a shock-and-awe strategy, using a sudden escalation in force by camouflage-clad federal agents.
That may yet work as a campaign tactic, if it provides Trump a way to sell himself as a law-and-order candidate, the antidote to chaos that developed on his own watch.
But as a policing tactic, it has failed to suppress the protests. The escalation has been followed by larger, better-equipped and more-aggressive crowds, and — as the new reinforcements showed — it exhausted federal resources before it exhausted the protesters.
On Monday, some of the activists in Portland have hired DNC lawyers and taken the Trump administration to court, arguing that federal agents sent to rein in the violent unrest in the city have “stamped out peaceful protesters.”
The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Columbia on Monday, on behalf of Don’t Shoot Portland and Wall of Moms, groups that have joined forces with Antifa and Black Lives Matter in their showdown with federal agents in Portland.
plaintiffs are represented by Perkins Coie LLP, a law firm on retainer with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), best known for paying Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to compile the now-debunked salacious dossier on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of coming up with a “pretextual scheme” to deploy “an army of over 100 camouflage-clad federal agents” as a “national police force” in Portland, Oregon.
Making no mention of Antifa’s role in the ongoing disturbances, the lawsuit says that federal agents, “dressed in military fatigues and toting military gear – have tear-gassed peaceful protesters...made unlawful arrests without probable cause, and otherwise used violence in an effort to stamp out peaceful and constitutionally protected protesters.”
“Peaceful protesters” were “unable to eat or sleep because of the toxic poison,” were “shot with rubber bullets, bean bags, pepper spray and a range of other projectiles at close range and with brutal effect,” the lawsuit says.
