Demonstrators again crowded in front of the federal courthouse and the city’s Justice Center in Portland, Oregon late Monday night, before authorities cleared them out as the loud sound and light of flash bang grenades filled the sky.
The federal officers’ actions at protests in Oregon’s largest city have been hailed in public by Donald Trump, but they have been done without local consent, and are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis that could escalate, as weeks of demonstrations find renewed focus in clashes with camouflaged, unidentified agents outside Portland’s US courthouse.
State and local authorities, who didn’t ask for federal help, are awaiting a ruling in a lawsuit filed late last week. State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in court papers that masked federal officers have arrested people on the street, far from the courthouse, with no probable cause and whisked them away in unmarked cars.
Constitutional law experts have said federal officers’ actions in the progressive city are a red flag in what could become a test case of states rights as the Trump administration expands federal policing.
“The idea that there’s a threat to a federal courthouse and the federal authorities are going to swoop in and do whatever they want to do without any cooperation and coordination with state and local authorities is extraordinary outside the context of a civil war,” Michael Dorf, a professor of constitutional law at Cornell University, told the Associated Press.
“It is a standard move of authoritarians to use the pretext of quelling violence to bring in force, thereby prompting a violent response and then bootstrapping the initial use of force in the first place” Dorf said.
“This is a democracy, not a dictatorship,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said on Twitter last night. “We cannot have secret police abducting people in unmarked vehicles. I can’t believe I have to say that to the president of the United States.”
Governor Kate Brown
(@OregonGovBrown)This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. We cannot have secret police abducting people in unmarked vehicles. I can’t believe I have to say that to the President of the United States.https://t.co/m7iejhPtyP
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday sent an a letter to Attorney General William Barr, urging that he appoint a special counsel to investigate alleged civil rights or criminal violations against protesters, journalists or legal observers in the city.
The Oregonian reported that last night’s protests – the 54th continuous night – began with two groups, called the Wall of Moms and PDXDadPod, marching from the riverfront to the Justice Center at 9pm.
Among the crowd was Mardy Widman. The 79-year-old grandmother of five said this was her first time protesting since George Floyd’s death because of her fear of the coronavirus, but the Trump administration’s decision to send federal agents to Portland had motivated her to come.
The Oregonian reports that by 9:15 pm, more than 1,000 people had gathered in the area as the march joined a group of around 300 Black Lives Matter protesters who had already gathered there. Federal officers set off smoke devices near the courthouse in attempts to clear the crowd at around 11:35pm and then again at 12:25am.
