Portland Mayor Decries Mounting Bloodshed, Tells ICE to Get Out After Federal Agents Shoot Two


Yves here. It’s appalling to see not just persistent ICE jack-bootery but also far too many knee-jerk defenses of its lawlessness in the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. And if you check Twitter on the Portland shootings, you’ll find more ritual denunciations. Nevertheless, there are also some informative takes”:

A key point with the Minneapolis murder-by-ICE that seems to be generally in play (for instance, the use of masks and not presenting badges, statements that they are not subject to normal police accountability):

And at least as of now, protests are kicking off:

France has such a strong history of taking to the streets because demonstrations were effective, particularly before the days under the Louis-Napoleon’s Second Empire. Then, Baron Haussman led a massive redesign of Paris, carving out what were to be grandes boulevards. Modern accounts oddly sanitize the main reason for this massive urban project: better police control of the city. Rabbits’ warrens of narrow streets aid defenders.

We Americans lack such traditions and see protestors as the enemy of the propertied classes, as in a major threat to order, as opposed to defenders of liberties. It seems unlikely geographically separated urban centers can make a stand against ICE, but the quick succession of ICE shootings in different cities are leading to a serious try.

By Jake Jackson, a staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

The mayor of Portland, Oregon told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to leave the city after federal agents shot and wounded two people on Thursday, just a day after an ICE agent killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

“We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement. “Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”

The shooting took place Thursday afternoon during what the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described as a “targeted vehicle stop” conducted by Border Patrol agents. Echoing its narrative about the deadly Minneapolis shooting—which was contradicted by video footage from the scene—DHS said the driver “weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents.”

But Wilson said Thursday that the Trump administration could not be trusted to provide an accurate account of events or conduct an honest investigation.

“We know what the federal government says happened here,” said Wilson. “There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time has long passed.”

The man and woman shot by Border Patrol agents were reportedly married, and both were taken to a nearby hospital. Neither their identities nor their conditions were immediately made public.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said late Thursday that his office was investigating the shooting to determine “whether any federal officer acted outside the scope of their lawful authority.”

“We have been clear about our concerns with the excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland, and today’s incident only heightens the need for transparency and accountability,” said Rayfield. “Oregonians deserve clear answers when people are injured in their neighborhoods.”

The shootings in Minneapolis and Portland were hardly the first time federal immigration officers have used deadly force during US President Donald Trump’s lawless mass deportation campaign.

The Marshall Project noted earlier this week that “federal officers have fatally shot at least three other people in the last five months.”

“Agents have also shot other people,” The Marshall Project added. “The Trace, the nonprofit news organization covering gun violence, has counted more than a dozen such shootings. In some cases, the victims survived, including a woman who suffered multiple bullet wounds in an incident in Chicago in October. The Border Patrol officer who shot her appeared to brag about it in a text message, later presented in court evidence. The message reportedly read, ‘I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.’”

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