The request is specifically directed at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel who have been caught in multiple videos arresting protesters and placing them in unmarked SUVs.
Protesters in Portland have been protesting racial inequality and police brutality for the past 50 nights, US Attorney Billy J. Williams said in a statement. Federal authorities have protected the United States Courthouse Mark O. Hatfield and, at times, the interaction between protesters and the police has turned violent. Last weekend, a protester was seriously injured after the man was shot in the head with impact ammunition.
The Governor of Oregon and the Mayor of Portland demanded the withdrawal of the troops, and an American senator joined them in condemning the arrests.
“Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters,” US Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat representing Oregon, tweeted.
Merkley also tweeted a video of that arrest showing two masked and camouflaged individuals wearing generic “police” patches, detaining a person dressed in a black suit and placing them in an unmarked van before leaving.
The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has admitted to being one of the agencies involved in the arrest of protesters.
“Violent anarchists have organized events in Portland over the past few weeks with the deliberate intention of damaging and destroying federal property, as well as injuring federal agents and agents,” the agency said in a statement to CNN. “These criminal actions will not be tolerated.”
The statement said CBP officers suspected the person seen in the Merkley video tweeted “attacks on federal agents or destruction of federal property,” and that they moved the person to a safer location for questioning after seeing “a large crowd and violent. ” move towards “them”. CNN was unable to independently verify what happened before or after the video was recorded.
CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan tweeted that the agency will continue to arrest “violent criminals who are destroying federal property.” He also said that CBP personnel are clearly marked as federal officials and have unique identifiers.
“You will not see names on their uniforms because these same violent criminals use this information to attack them and their families, putting both of them at risk. As Acting Commissioner, I will not let that happen!” Morgan tweeted.
Portland Mayor Tim Wheeler demanded Friday that President Donald Trump send federal officials home.
“This is not the America we want. This is not the Portland we want,” Wheeler said at a press conference. “We are demanding that the President withdraw these additional troops that he sent to our city. He is not helping to contain or reduce the situation, he is obviously having exactly the opposite impact.”
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, who visited the city on Thursday, defended his officers’ actions and said in a tweet: “DHS officers were assaulted with lasers and frozen water bottles by violent criminals trying to shoot down federal property. 2 officers were injured. “
“Our men and women in uniform are patriots,” he said in another tweet featuring uniformed officers who appeared to be similar to those shown in the video earlier in the week.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown described the arrests as “a blatant abuse of power by the federal government” in a tweet Thursday.
Brown tweeted that he told Wolf “that the federal government should remove all federal officials from our streets.”
“His response showed me that he is on a mission to provoke confrontations for political ends,” he tweeted. “It is putting both Oregon residents and local law enforcement at risk.”
ACLU Files Lawsuit Against DHS
Mark Pettibone, a 29-year-old Portland resident, told CNN that he was caught by unknown federal agents on Wednesday.
“I was kidnapped on the street of my own city for protesting without violence and appearing in solidarity,” Pettibone said. “About four people got out of the truck that pulled up in front of me, and my first reaction was that I tried to escape.”
Pettibone said he was detained for about two hours and that he plans to speak to the National Lawyers Guild, but will follow up with the ACLU.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon sued DHS on Friday for the arrests.
The ACLU says DHS officers “have been deployed on the widespread objections of local leaders and community members, have been using tear gas, rubber bullets and acoustic weapons indiscriminately against protesters, journalists and legal observers.”
“This is a fight to save our democracy,” said Kelly Simon, acting legal director of the ACLU of Oregon.
“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars grab someone on the street, we call it kidnapping; what’s happening now in Portland should concern everyone in the United States,” the tweet read. ACLU. “These actions are unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”
CNN’s Geneva Sands contributed to this report.
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