The moms shuffled into position on Sunday night, arms linked, backs to the fence in front of Portland’s federal courthouse. The sky had darkened. Behind the fence, anonymous federal agents in fatigues leveled their weapons at the women’s backs. The human shield was in place, a barrier against the secret police. The “Wall of Moms.”
These weren’t looters or rioters or the “anarchists” President Donald Trump says hate our country. They weren’t the “violent extremists” that acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has vowed to put down, nor the fabled “antifa” bogeymen who keep Tucker Carlson up at night. They were just moms, worrying ― as moms tend to do ― about kids being beaten and shot and black-bagged in unmarked vehicles. Ready to put their bodies on the line to defend the U.S. Constitution. About 100 of them. Some had never been to a protest before. Some were pregnant.
Outside the federal courthouse, which has become a flashpoint for conflict in the city, they were tear-gassed.
Scenes like this have played out repeatedly since Trump urged governors to “dominate” protesters speaking out against racism and police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis nearly two months ago. Anti-racist protests have persisted in many U.S. cities and remained largely peaceful, but the administration’s response has been anything but — and nowhere has state violence against civilians been worse than in Portland, a city Trump has promised to “quell.”
During the last two weeks, federal law enforcement agents in Portland have terrorized peaceful protesters by bundling them into unmarked vehicles without probable cause and pulling masks over their faces — a development experts say is a “a classic way that violence happens in authoritarian regimes” and that has deeply alarmed several members of Congress.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) called it “the activity of a police state.”
On Saturday, federal agents in Portland attacked Christopher David, a 53-year-old Navy veteran with health problems, with batons. They broke his hand after David, upset about what he considered “Pinochet-type behavior from our own government,” showed up at a protest to tell the agents he felt they were violating their oath to the Constitution. The previous weekend, Trump’s forces almost killed 26-year-old Donavan LaBella by shooting him in the head with a “less-lethal” round that fractured his skull.
By unleashing his secret police in Portland — against mostly peaceful citizens — Trump has turned the progressive city into what local journalist Robert Evans calls a “bellwether to see what this administration can get away with.” And a clear throughline exists from what Trump is getting away with in Portland to Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., where last month Attorney General Bill Barr authorized the use of force against peaceful protesters so a president who reportedly kept a collection of Hitler speeches by his bed could hold a Bible upside down for a fascist photo-op.
This is what dictators do.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas)
Trump stationed unidentified gunmen in Washington. The same is true in Portland, where Trump’s troops come mainly from within the Department of Homeland Security, wear no identification, have no clear chain of command and appear to operate outside the law.
“It’s as close up to the line as you can get to actual war without live rounds,” Evans told The New York Times about what’s happening in Portland. “It’s really hard for me to see how things go much further without people dying.”
Many of the federal agents in Portland are attached to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which has the authority to operate within 100 miles of any “external boundary” ― an area where 2 out of 3 Americans live. The quasi-military agency has a history of racism, criminality and violence and is shot through with far-right extremism. With CBP agents operating anonymously in American cities, far-right groups could easily disguise themselves as federal agents to sow further chaos and target protesters with violence, according to Castro.
“It becomes more likely the more that this tactic is used,” he told The New York T