Portland protesters describe being swept up at night by federal agents during Trump’s operation – The Washington Post

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PORTLAND, Ore. — The protest outside Portland’s federal courthouse had died down by 3:40 a.m. on July 29, when a green laser shined down from a seventh-floor balcony used as a lookout by federal agents.

The laser landed on John Hacker, an activist and citizen-journalist standing in a park about 170 feet away. It skittered across Hacker’s feet, head and torso for more than 45 seconds. Suddenly, an unmarked van pulled in front of him. Doors slid open. Heavily armed men in camouflage tactical gear surrounded Hacker and took him into custody.

Hacker, 36, is among nearly two dozen people arrested but not charged during the Trump administration’s five-week response, from July through early August, to the demonstrations against police brutality in Portland. Before letting Hacker go, federal agents collected a DNA swab, photographed him and confiscated a phone that has not been returned, he said.

The Washington Post conducted an in-depth examination of four instances when unsuspecting people were scooped up from the city’s streets by federal agents in the middle of the night, based on information that turned out to be inaccurate or insufficient to charge them with a crime. The cases bring to light the tactics employed by border agents and immigration officers deployed to Portland for an operation President Trump has touted as a success.

Operation Diligent Valor has become a prominent issue in the presidential campaign. Trump has said his law-and-order approach is necessary to stop vandalism and property damage during protests in Portland and elsewhere. Activists and some Democrats have portrayed it as an unnecessary escalation.

The shooting death of a man after confrontations on Aug. 29 in Portland between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters intensified the divide. The next day, Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the administration was open to sending federal officers back into Portland, over the opposition of local officials.

From detention to release, the four people whose cases were examined by The Post described experiences they found harrowing and unnerving. Three are speaking for the first time.

One was picked up and interrogated in an unmarked van, she said, and then dropped off in another location in the city. Two others, including Hacker, said they were held in jail cells before being let go without explanation or charges. Another, a U.S. citizen like the other three, was mistakenly identified as a foreigner and arrested on charges that were later dropped.

Previously unpublished security camera footage and other videos obtained by The Post confirmed elements of each person’s account. The examination also drew on videos from bystanders, interviews with witnesses and court records.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Oregon said 23 of 98 arrests by federal agents during the operation did not result in charges.

The office would not name the 23 people, making it impossible to judge how complete the tally is. Kevin Sonoff, a spokesman, said the office considered someone arrested if they “were detained for any amount of time” and “weren’t free to go for whatever reason.” Under that definition, all the cases examined by The Post would qualify as arrests.

Sonoff said that as part of their routine process, federal prosecutors reviewed evidence in each case to determine whether charges were warranted.

“Our office works closely with law enforcement to review the facts surrounding each arrest,” he wrote in an email. “Based upon that discussion and an assessment of potential federal charges, prosecutors accept or decline cases using their best professional judgment as to whether a case should proceed to court.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman, Harry Fones, said in a statement to The Post that “when federal law enforcement has probable cause that someone has committed a federal crime they are able to detain and investigate.”

In Hacker’s case, the DHS spokesman acknowledged that Customs and Border Protection agents detained Hacker because they believed he matched the description of someone suspected of aiding a protester who threw a firecracker at a federal officer. “Upon further investigation and coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s office, a decision was made not to pursue charges against Mr. Hacker,” the spokesman said.

Hacker, whose live-stream videos earlier in the night show him documenting the protests but not participating, denied the allegation and called the explanation “laughable.”

The U.S. attorney’s office and DHS declined to comment on the other three cases.

The other three people who shared their accounts with The Post also denied doing anything illegal.

The death of George Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck in late May led to scattered protests across Portland, a city with a history of demonstrations for liberal causes.

But the arrival of DHS agents in early July re-energized the protests, channeling ire toward federal authorities and turning the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse into the epicenter of unrest.

Each night, even as most of the city fell silent, longtime activists and new protesters gathered around the one-block building in a show of force. Federal agents emerged regularly to fire tear gas and clashed with people suspected of throwing projectiles, shining lasers at officers or shooting fireworks at the building.

Evelyn Bassi, 30, a lifelong Portland resident, began attending nightly protests in early June. A bartender and chef who hasn’t been able to work during the pandemic, Bassi said she came to the courthouse in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

On July 15, around 1:55 a.m., she and a friend, Ryan Ottomano, were standing at an empty intersection behind the courthouse, video shows. They were watching protesters chalk messages on the pavement, she said, and were preparing to go home.

A dark gray Dodge Grand Caravan with tinted windows pulled up next to them, according to security camera footage of the intersection obtained by The Post from Multnomah County, which owns a nearby building.

“That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, no. They’re here for us,’ ” said Ottomano, 29.

The van’s front and side doors on the passenger side opened as it rolled to a stop, Bassi said.

“I noticed that there were people in camo,” she said. “I threw my hands up and said, ‘We’re leaving, we’re leaving,’ like, ‘We’re not causing any trouble.’ ”

Fearful and unsure who the men were, Bassi and Ottomano said, they ran. The van followed them for half a block before making a U-turn to pursue Bassi, who had turned to run back toward the courthouse, video shows.

After the van caught up, two officers in camouflage tactical gear with “POLICE” patches across their chests approached Bassi. She turned to face them with her hands up. “I haven’t done anything at all,” she repeated, according to video by a witness.

The agents held Bassi’s arms behind her back and escorted her to the van. She was ordered to sit cross-legged on the floor of the vehicle — its middle seats removed — with her hands on her helmet and her eyes down, she said. They began to drive through downtown.

A pair of agents in the front and two more in the back were quiet, Bassi recalled.

“They never said who they were,” Bassi said. “I didn’t know if I was going to be seen again. I didn’t know what was going on. But I could tell that I was being arrested or detained or something.”

An officer asked whether Bassi, whose helmet covered her hair, was blond, she recalled.

“No,” she said.

The van made frequent turns for five to 10 minutes, until the agents stopped at a quiet intersection seven blocks from where Bassi had been picked up, she said.

Following officers’ orders, she climbed out and put her hands on the van’s roof, she said. An agent frisked her and asked her whether she had a laser pointer, she said. She told him she did not.

“You’re being detained because you match the description of somebody who committed a federal crime against an officer,” the agent said, according to Bassi, who is transgender.

As they removed her helmet and a cap underneath it, her brunette hair fell down.

“That’s not him,” an officer said, according to Bassi.

Another held up a grainy cellphone photo of the man they sought, Bassi recalled. It showed a person wearing a face covering and a gray bicycle helmet that bore little resemblance to her black helmet, she said.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/investigations/portland-protesters-federal-response-trump/

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