The acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday doubled down on the need for federal officers in Portland, forcefully rebuking local leaders for failing to curb the nightly “lawlessness'' in and around the downtown federal courthouse.
“If you did your job from a local perspective, we wouldn’t be there,” said Chad F. Wolf. “What we have in Portland is very different than what we have in any other city.”
He blamed city decisions that have led to a lack of coordination between local police and federal agencies needed to handle what he called a persistent criminal element continuing to cause destruction in Portland. Wolf said that stemmed from 2018 when Portland officials took a “hands off” approach and restricted police from helping federal officers respond to an encampment outside the headquarters of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Southwest Portland.
Wolf described it as a “pattern I’m concerned about.”
At a news conference at Homeland Security headquarters, Wolf stood with the deputy director of the Federal Protective Services and the acting secretary of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to defend their officers’ authority at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in the wake of weeks of demonstrations against police violence and systemic racism.
The government agents have responded on and off federal property, arresting people suspected of vandalizing federal buildings, shining green lasers or throwing fireworks, bottles and other objects at them.
While President Trump has said the enhanced federal presence has quelled the protests, larger crowds of demonstrators have turned out in downtown on recent nights and echoed calls by Gov. Kate Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to get the aggressive paramilitary squads out of the city.
Later Tuesday, Wheeler said in a statement that the federal intervention “is uninvited, untrained, and unwelcome.”
“The Acting Secretary knows we feel that way, but we’re happy to tell him again,” Wheeler said. “The violence was being contained and started to de-escalate before they arrived. They intervened and escalated tensions to new levels.”
The crowds had begun to dwindle to much smaller but still chaotic gatherings until regaining momentum last week after a deputy U.S. marshal fired an impact munition at the head of a 26-year-old protester now recovering from a skull fracture and Customs and Border Patrol officers whisked away a man in an unmarked van for questioning. Over the weekend, a marshal battered a U.S. Navy veteran with a baton as he tried to talk to federal officers.
The protests have swelled to more than 1,000 people — and they are once again attracting a broader base in a city that’s increasingly unified and outraged.
Yet the protests also have consistently devolved into violent encounters late at night and into early morning hours with some protesters damaging buildings including the federal courthouse, setting fires and confronting federal officers and Portland police. In the last week, three separate lawsuits have been filed against federal officers as local, state and many of Oregon’s Democratic Congress members have condemned their heavy-handed force that has included indiscriminate and frequent use of tear gas, less-lethal rounds and strikes with batons.
Wolf said the federal officers have made 43 arrests.
But the Oregon U.S. Attorney’s Office said there had been 24 federal arrests as of Sunday, with 13 people charged. The other 11 were arrested on “suspicion of a crime” and released without being charged, according to Kevin Sonoff, a spokesman for the office. Another seven people were arrested late Monday into early Tuesday on federal allegations. The charges have included assault on a federal officer, destruction of federal property and attempted arson.
The Federal Protective Service in Portland asked Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for help in late June.
“Our staff was quickly overwhelmed,‘' said Chris Cline, deputy director of the Federal Protective Service.
Under existing federal code, and with no additional powers extended by President Trump’s executive order, the secretary of Homeland Security may cross-designate employees transferred to the Federal Protective Service to protect federally owned property, Cline and Wolf noted.
According to the federal code, these officers can make arrests “without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of the officer or agent or for any felony” and “conduct investigations, on and off the property in question, of offenses that may have been committed against property owned or occupied by the Federal Government or persons on the property.”
The governor dismissed the justification for the boosted federal presence as more of the same from a presidential staff seeking to score campaign points.
“This is coming from an administration that has deployed secret police to abduct people into unmarked vehicles. This is a democracy, not a dictatorship,” Brown said in a statement. “If the Trump administration was really interested in problem solving or public safety, they would be focused on reducing the confrontation and retraining their officers. It’s clear, however, that they are only interested in political theater. The Trump administration needs to stop playing politics with people’s lives.”
Despite reports that have said federal officers aren’t wearing identifying insignia on their uniforms, Cline and Mark S. Morgan, acting secretary of Customs and Border Protection, held up examples of the ballistic vests that say “POLICE'' on the front or back, with Border Patrol patches on the shoulders. They also provided photos of the dark blue uniforms worn by Federal Protective Services and the camouflage gear worn by Customs and Border patrol agents.
The U.S. Inspector General’s Office is looking into the baton beating of Navy veteran Christopher David Saturday night and allegations that unidentified federal officers are picking people up off the street without probable cause.
In reference to one video that has circulated on social media showed federal officers in camouflage taking a man into an unmarked van off a Portland street, Cline said the person was questioned, believed to have shined a laser at officers. The federal officers tracked the man to a quieter area away from the courthouse, not wanting to wade into a violent crowd, and placed him in the van to take him to another spot for questioning. He was released after federal officers determined he wasn’t the person sought, Cline said.
“It’s not a custodial arrest,‘' he said. “It was a simple engagement.”
Oregon’s Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum is suing federal law enforcement and seeking a temporary restraining order that would bar federal officers from removing people from city streets and placing them in unmarked cars without apparent probable cause.
Morgan defended his officers’ use of unmarked vans for their work as “standard practice” and appropriate in today’s climate, citing vandalism to marked law enforcement cars in the wake of anti-police brutality demonstrations across the country.
“It makes sense to use an unmarked vehicle for protection of agents doing their job and for the protection of the public,‘' he said.
Both Morgan and Wolf called it offensive for Portlanders or others to describe federal officers as “unidentified storm troopers” or the “gestapo.”
In an attempt to counter a New York Times report, Morgan said the Customs and Border Protection’s Special Response Team and Border Patrol Tactical Team known as BORTAC are highly trained to respond to riot control in detention facilities. The Times quoted from a Homeland Security internal document prepared for Wolf’s trip to Portland, which warned the federal officers in Portland were not specifically trained in riot control or mass demonstrations.
Wolf, who visited the federal courthouse last Thursday, said he called Portland’s mayor and Oregon’s governor last Wednesday. He asked if they needed federal personnel or “other assets'' to address the nightly violence in the city. They said no thanks and leave.
“I’m willing to work with them,‘' Wolf said. “We need to de-escalate. We need to find a peaceful outcome.”
But he pledged to keep federal officers in Portland until the violence ends.
“We still have a job to do,” he said. “If we left tomorrow, they would burn that building down.”
While Wolf didn’t say how many federal officers are in Portland, Gabriel Russell, who is regional director of the Federal Protective Service, said there were 114 federal law enforcement officers working to protect the federal buildings in Portland.
Russell described the officers as taking a “defensive posture” from May 27 through July 3, staying inside the courthouse and exiting only in response to serious crimes or attempts to breach its doors at night. But that all changed late July 3 and July 4, when some people are accused of tossing fireworks and liquid-filled balloons through the front door of the courthouse, tried to barricade the door and the front glass door shattered, Russell said in a statement.
According to Cline of the Federal Protective Service, members of Oregon’s U.S. Attorney’s Office are present at each evening roll call with the federal officers stationed at the courthouse, reviewing the uses of force and rules of engagement. Cline said the federal officers are acting under the direction of the Federal Protective Service.
Oregonian staff writer Everton Bailey contributed to this story.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
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