President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement officials on Monday defended the descent of militarized government forces upon Portland, Ore., rejecting pleas from local and state leaders to pull back the fusion of federal officers.
In an interview on CNN, acting deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli claimed the department deployed federal law enforcement personnel to Portland over the July 4 weekend after having received “locally generated” intelligence regarding “planned attacks” on federal facilities.
Cuccinelli said the federal agents have “been there ever since” on a mission to protect those U.S. government buildings, wearing the “very same uniforms” during their time in Portland.
“The crowd has seen them every day, marked and so forth,” he added, dismissing reports of unidentifiable security officers taking aggressive action against protesters.
Cuccinelli also warned DHS would advance its various law enforcement components into other American cities “if we get the same kind of intelligence” about threats to federal facilities or officers, saying: “We would respond the same way.”
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler urged the Trump administration Sunday to call off its intervention in the city, accusing the federal forces of “sharply escalating the situation” and employing tactics that are “abhorrent” and “completely unconstitutional.”
But acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf insisted Monday that the “violent anarchists and extremists” protesting in Portland “were violent well before DHS surged federal assets” there.
“DHS is not going to back down from our responsibilities,” Wolf told Fox News. “We are not escalating. We are protecting, again, federal facilities. It’s our job.”
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan also disputed the mayor’s assessment of the federal law enforcement presence, calling it a “stupid statement” that was “not based in reality or fact.”
Morgan described the Portland protesters as “criminals” who were “willfully coordinating, organizing and planning to intentionally attack and destroy federal property and harm” U.S. government officers. “We’re not going anywhere,” he told Fox News.
The remarks from the three senior administration officials, none of whom were confirmed by the Senate to serve in their current roles, come amid national scrutiny of protesters’ treatment at the hands of DHS forces in Portland.
One viral video of the protests depicts a Navy veteran, who is standing still, being beaten with a baton and tear-gassed by a group of masked officers.
Another piece of footage from Portland widely circulated online shows two men wearing camouflage loading a protester into an unmarked van while refusing to identify themselves to onlookers.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Sunday likened the city’s federal occupation to “adding gasoline to a fire,” and said she “was very, very clear” with administration officials about the need for DHS officers to retreat from the city.
“The Trump administration needs to stop playing politics with people’s lives,” Brown, a Democrat, said. “We don’t have a secret police in this country. This is not a dictatorship. And Trump needs to get his officers off the streets.”
Meanwhile, the president has promoted his hard-line response to the city’s protests and other mass demonstrations against racial injustice and police brutality which have continued since the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by Minneapolis police in May.
Portland politicians “are just fine with 50 days of anarchy,” Trump tweeted Sunday, alleging that “Radical Left Democrats” would “destroy our Country” if he were not reelected. In an interview that aired Sunday, the president also touted the “very tough stand” his administration had taken.
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