Portland Update: Trump Administration In Talks With Oregon Over The Removal Of Federal Agents

The Trump administration and the state of Oregon are said to be in early negotiations for the removal of federal agents from Portland. The White House deployed these agents from Homeland Security to the city in order to arrest protesters by grabbing them off the streets and forcing them into unmarked vans.

Negotiations with the office of Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, are still preliminary and no deal has been reached, an unnamed senior White House official told the Associated Press. The offices of President Trump ordered the deployment of federal agents in order to quell the nightly protests in Portland that have been ongoing for two months. Mayor Wheeler said that the agents were not requested or welcome in the city, and called the move an attempt by Trump to look strong ahead of the upcoming election.

“We, as you know, have done an excellent job of watching over Portland and watching our courthouse where they wanted to burn it down, they’re anarchists, nothing short of anarchist agitators,” Trump said on Tuesday, rationalizing the use of federal agents in Portland. “And we have protected it very powerfully. And if we didn’t go there, I will tell you, you wouldn’t have a courthouse. You’d have a billion-dollar burned-out building.”

The response of law enforcement officials to the Portland protests continues to generate controversy beyond the actions of federal agents. On Wednesday morning, Portland police once again used tear gas to dissipate crowds of protestors, despite the city’s ban on the gas outside of emergency situations.

Portland police have repeatedly declared demonstrations as riots in order to allow for the use of tear gas. People on the scene each night have rebuked these claims, saying that their protests were peaceful before police got involved. Officials also repeatedly have claimed that the use of these tactics is in response to violent individuals that have “hijacked legitimate protests.”