More Portland
Immergut later expressed frustration that the Trump administration had defied the court order and that Hegseth had authorized the Texas National Guard to enter the state, Oregonlive reported.
. . . The broader order on Sunday will halt National Guard members from being relocated from any state for federal service in the state of Oregon, including the California National Guard.
. . . “President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement,” a spokeswoman told The Post.
At this point, it isn't clear how this will play out.Yesterday, I began an effort to tally the number of demonstrator arrests in Portland vis-a-vis Los Angeles as a way of assessing the relative threat to federal facilities in each city, This would give a rough indication of how justifiable sending the National Guard into Portland might be. I discovered that there are additional problems in comparing the two cities:
As protests continue nightly outside the Portland ICE facility, there have been multiple reports of people getting arrested or detained — but figuring out who is in charge and what happens afterward isn't always straightforward.
At times, protesters are interacting with city police, county deputies or federal agents, and each agency handles arrests differently, which makes it harder for the public and journalists to track what is exactly happening.
. . . For instance, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon announced Thursday morning that a woman was in federal court on a felony offense of assaulting a federal officer Tuesday night at the ICE facility.
According to court documents, the woman had "applied red paint to the driveway of the ICE facility," and while being processed by federal officers, allegedly "struck one." That woman has been released pending further court proceedings. She pleaded guilty Friday and will be sentenced in December.
In contrast, KGW also received a statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, saying that six people were arrested for various offenses Tuesday night — but with no names or details.
Reports indicate that Portland police do not involve themselves when demonstrators attack the ICE facility directly, leaving enforcement to ICE personnel. In addition, police interaction with demonstrators is, apparently by policy, mostly limited to Dialogue Liaison Officers, who do not wear police uniforms and do not make arrests. Nevertheless, arrests were made by federal law enforcement at last Saturday's demonstration, for example:
Federal agents took several protesters into custody and deployed gas and pepper balls at least three times against a crowd of hundreds who gathered for a demonstration in front of the Portland ICE facility Saturday afternoon.
There was a noticeable contingent of counter-protesters among those gathered at the ICE facility throughout the day.
The events initially began as a march from Elizabeth Caruthers Park to the ICE facility organized primarily by Portland Contra Las Deportaciones (PDXCD).
One of the protesters into taken into custody was Holly Brown, one of the organizers of the march.
Brown, who was released around 5:30 p.m., said it was “really horrible inside.”
“There’s different holding cells with, like, really harsh fluorescent lights. There’s no bedding. It’s just like concrete. And the phones didn’t work. They didn’t have phones working in the entire facility,” Brown told KOIN 6 News. “There’s, all these different, like, posters on the wall encouraging people to self-deport. It’s a really horrible, horrible place.”
She said she was charged with trespassing on federal property.
According to the KGW link above, since federal arrestees aren't taken to the Multnomah County Jail, media doesn't tally these totals, but it's reasonable to infer that arrests by federal law enforcement must add considerably to the published Portland totals I cited in yesterday's post.But there's an additional problem with the generally favorable coverage of the demonstrations in Portland media, which starts with the mention of Holly Brown, who is apparently affiliated with Portland Contra Las Deportaciones (PDXCD), the organizer of Saeturday's protest. The KOIN link just above relies heavily on the account of someone identified only as Rainbow:
“What we did not expect in the targeted arrests was the full-on pushing that they did,” protester Rainbow told KOIN 6 News. “In the pushing, I ended up getting clocked in the eye by one of the federal agents, then they started tear gassing really bad.”
Rainbow said she saw an elderly couple in the group of protesters. The woman got hit in the head with a tear gas canister and began bleeding, eventually receiving help from medics. Rainbow claimed federal agents “tear-gassed the heck out of” the man who was using a walker to move around.
Who is Rainbow? The story doesn't identify her any other way but as a "protester". Is she, like Holly Brown, affiliated with PDXCD, the organizer? She identifies an elderly couple, with the woman hit in the head with a tear gas cannister, as well as a man using a walker. Why would elderly people choose to expose themselves to this sort of stuff? Who encouraged them to attend? This all seems to be part of a scripted event:
Hundreds of protesters marched to the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Facility on Saturday afternoon.
It is the latest demonstration since President Donald Trump announced last week he would deploy up to 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to Portland. Late Saturday afternoon, a federal judge temporarily blocked the deployment.
Before the temporary restraining order was known publicly, protesters gathered Saturday morning at nearby Elizabeth Caruthers Park in the South Waterfront neighborhood.
They later marched a few blocks toward the detention facility at around 1 p.m. and blocked the road in front of the building. Crowds gathered peacefully and mostly stayed concentrated in front of the facility. Soon after, federal law enforcement marched out of the center and fired tear gas and smoke canisters to disperse the crowd. They also fired pepper balls at people.
. . . Brittanee Carr of Milwaukie brought her 5-year-old daughter to the protest. She said her family has been following the protests on TikTok the past few days.
“I want to show her you know that this is not OK, that you can stand up for what you believe in, and we can come out here and we can protest peacefully,” Carr said.
Throughout the afternoon, federal law enforcement officers would occasionally walk out of the facility to disperse crowds and let federal vehicles inside the facility.
In fact, other accounts show the confrontation lasting until 9:00 PM. If the crowds -- amounting to several hundred -- were blocking the street or blocking access to the facility, then a law enforcement action was justified, but it appears that the Portland Police were unwilling to take enforcement action themselves. Compunding the problem is either the extreme naivete or deliberate connivance of elderly and disabled people and young children being placed in a dangerous situation. If tear gas and pepper balls were deployed, why did any of these stay there?Beyond that, even if Portland is more or less quiet on certain nights, it's plain that PDXCD and similar groups can order up several hundred demonstrators, including elderly people with walkers and five-year-old children as potential victims, any time they want. So far, I don't think we're getting the whole story on the Portland riots.
UPDATE: This vignette took place in Portland Sunday night. Portland media has been calling the latest demonstrations "family-friendly events".
Comments
Post a Comment