As most of you have already heard, the big protest ride on Saturday turned ugly once it got to South Waterfront. What one BikePortland reader described as a “joyful” vibe at Irving Park in Northeast Portland where the ride met up, ended up with a full frontal assault on innocent people by federal officers outside the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters building on South Bancroft Street.
I left shortly after thousands of bike riders converged on Caruthers Park (a few blocks north of the ICE facility) for a rally organized by labor union groups. I didn’t experience the tear gas and flash bangs that have come to define the otherwise peaceful event; but asked for readers to share their memories.
Geoffrey Hiller, a photographer (view his images from the day below) working on a five-year project about bike culture in Portland, was on the bike ride. He knew emotions were high after the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, but didn’t expect one of the many mass bike rides he’s documented in the past five years would end in him being tear gassed for the first time. “Once I got to Southwest I felt a huge shift of energy,” Hiller shared with me after the event. “The solemn feeling in the air was so different from the way the ride began.” As he walked with hundreds of other cyclists south to the ICE building, he heard the first loud bangs. “And a few seconds later I was engulfed in tear gas,” Hiller recalled.
“It was painful and all I could do was shoot off a few more frames and head back to the park to get my bike. It was awful seeing little kids and seniors affected by the nasty chemical gas.”
Another person who reached out to BikePortland to share their story, Eric Oliver, said he never thought he’d have his first amendment rights violently violated. Like many others, he figured since major labor unions endorsed and planned the event and it happened in daytime — not to mention the fact that all sorts of folks showed up — that it would be a safe event.
Here’s how Oliver describes what happened as he left the rally in the park and headed to the ICE building:
“The march was composed of lots of different types of people, including many families. I saw elderly people with walkers, canes, and wheelchairs. I saw kids, toddlers, and babies. I saw many people wearing symbols of their religious or union affiliation. The mood was lighthearted and folks were singing and chanting slogans.
A few moments later, I was about a block north of the ICE facility and I heard multiple explosions and saw munitions flying through the air and exploding, perhaps about six times. I saw clouds of smoke begin to billow. At that point I thought the smoke was a visual deterrent, but then people started screaming and running back north. Then, the chemical irritant hit my body and I understood what had happened. In a moment, the gas created a choking sensation in my throat and affected my eyes to the point that it was difficult to see through tears and the feeling of burning and inflammation. People had fallen to their knees and were grasping around crouched and with their arms out bumping into things. I held the hands of two friends, and the three of us proceeded north.
When we were finally in fresher air, we splashed our faces with water to relieve the burning sensation, though it still lingered on my body into the afternoon.”
Oliver said he was “shocked” the federal officers used chemical weapons as he felt the marchers posed no threat. “This was a simple and peaceful protest, which I understood to be protected by our first amendment constitutional rights.”
Kris Holmes also biked with the group to South Waterfront. She’s been to protests at the ICE facility when tear gas has been deployed, but said something was different on Saturday. “The amount [of tear gas] they used on Saturday was astounding. I saw people holding their crying kids, running away from the gas. It kept spreading several blocks towards the park. It was awful.”
Reaction from local leaders to the conduct of ICE officers on Saturday has been serious. Time will tell if it’s enough to curb this fascist behavior. Given the way this Trump administration is going, I seriously doubt it this is the last time we’ll see ICE officers act like this. But given what I know about Portlanders, I also seriously doubt this is the last time we come together for a powerful — and peaceful — protest.
Thanks for reading.
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Tragic, but unfortunately to be expected. It certainly tells you the caliber of federal law enforcement agent we’re dealing with, though. Nothing says courageous defender of the law like tear gassing tweens and grandmas on sight. The upside is that every dollar they spend on CS gas grenades is a dollar they can’t spend on hiring a new agent. Every agent stuck on guard duty is an agent who’s not out on an enforcement operation.
While it’s predictable it was pretty unexpected, basically like gassing a “no kings” rally kids, elders, etc
People have what is called a fight or flight instinct and when there is no place for a person to flee to, or when they are surrounded, they will always fight back.
You could increase the quality of your comment by expanding on why the federal agents felt threatened and why they had no place to flee to. Without doing so, your comment looks like shilling for their abhorrent behavior.
tweens? No. People of ALL ages, from months old to nearing 100 years, were present.
As for risk assessment, we will all have our own point that’s too much, but this was very publicly planned to march the block and pass the facility, returning to the park. See John and Marks replies below.
Maybe the cynics think this was expected. I’ve been to a few protests, all peaceful, but the one that ended up getting gassed was something where I wouldn’t have brought kids (because I expected the first amendment violations). Wasn’t expecting gas, but it was confrontational.
This protest the other day is one I absolutely would have assumed it’s (reasonably) safe to bring the whole family. The use of force here is outrageous, the agents involved SHOULD, in a sane world, face prosecution for stuff like this. Gassing people should be treated like what it is, assault.
Hopefully between crowd sourced videos, whatever local governments are currently doing, and eventual investigations there’s eventually going to be accountability.
It’s not likely to happen but I occasionally imagine all the swat teams in Oregon collaborating to execute simultaneous O’dark-thirty raids on the various motels where the agents from out of town are staying. Obviously they’d be deemed to be flight risks and denied bail. The unfortunate repercussion for the agents would be that since most jails won’t place cops with the general population and since they’re potentially co-conspirators who can’t be in contact so it would be solidarity for all of them.
I was at Saturday’s protest, starting with the group ride from Irving Park and ending with the tear gas assault on the crowd, and want to triple-underline this:
Thousands of ordinary Portlanders attended a peaceful daytime protest Saturday, and masked paramilitary agents, from the safety of their fortified building, hit them with huge quantities of tear gas and other munitions, unexpectedly and without warning.
I recorded and shared a brief video of a crying girl being treated after this attack. (It kinda went viral, so maybe you’ve seen it.) Most of the reactions I’ve seen to the video have been “this is awful,” “WTF,” “prosecute these assholes,” “abolish ICE,” etc. A few—sadly but, I guess, predictably—have amounted to “don’t bring your kids to protests.” Which makes me furious, for several reasons:
Simply put, every “don’t take your kids” commenter is engaging in classic victim-blaming. That’s an ugly, noxious thing. Even when it’s dressed up as concern for kids.
We should all be furious about what happened Saturday afternoon. But that fury should be directed squarely at the perpetrators of the violence. Period.
Demonize law enforcement and nothing good happens.
Hire demons for law enforcement, nothing good happens.
Just do as the fascists say, everything will be fine.
It really is getting harder to defend their actions, isn’t it? When you can’t directly criticize the victims of state violence, I guess platitudes are all that you have left.
ICE is not law enforcement though.
And we should always demonize fascists.
***portion of comment deleted due to personal insults. – Jonathan***
“ICE is not law enforcement”
No? They enforce immigration law.
Your point on enforcing immigration law is valid. This is NOT a defense of the current administration’s approach to enforcing immigration law. Rather it’s to point out that we as a nation need to wrestle with how we enforce immigration laws or get them changed through the legislative process. No one complained when Obama was labeled the “Deporter-In-Chief” during his two terms and deported more individuals than the current administration has. Again, the approach of the current administration must change but this is a bigger issue that crosses multiple Democrat & Republican administrations plus Congress.
I wasn’t defending that. The manner of immigration enforcement under Trump has been disgusting.
For those who want ICE to not enforce the law at all, I’d say: Change the law. That’s the only solution. Our current mess is the direct result of policy failures all around.
Bold of you to assume Trump’s Gestapo actually care what the law says.
In Italy, too? They have been turned into a paramilitary force under the guise of law enforcement. Period.
At some point this odd binary of pro and con law-enforcement has become interwoven with the defense of extra-legal and extra-judiciary behavior. While murder, assault etc. are technically illegal and prosecutable offenses, from what I understand the state cannot prosecute federal thugs if they are acting under the supremacy clause and “necessary and proper” doctrine. Please someone who is better at interpreting law pipe in.
All this is fine and dandy during normal times in the absence of a poorly trained, extra-legal militia that is under the authority of only one person (some recruited through white nationalist marketing). Except that if a state attempts to try an ICE goon, the federal government can move that trial to federal court where it is much more likely to be dismissed.
So that means we have no legal recourse for any illegal act by federal employees, regardless of their behavior.
Steve, do you want to live in a world where a government entity has the entitlement to act on any behavior without repercussions? Because that is called authoritarianism. The same thing that happens now to “radical leftists” you might disagree with will also happen to people who you agree with once the rule of law is eroded enough to be disregarded.
It’s going to be difficult for federal agents to assert a qualified immunity defense for actions that are seemingly contrary to written use of force policies and judicial injunctions. Only time will tell if it’s an issue that ever reaches the courts and requires resolution.
Oh, no, someone has demonized me! They insult me online and IRL. They’re even so passionate that they yell and scream. I’ve even heard of some throwing water balloons and snowballs. I’m a big strong man who just can’t handle any of that, let alone reflect on the conduct of my cohort that wields disproportionate, state-sanctioned power over the general public. Guess all I can do is physically assault the demonizers! *shrugs like a smug bastard* Sure they might die, but what can I do? I gotta keep them from recording me somehow.
Roll over like a coward and let thugs trample your rights and nothing good happens.
God bless these good Americans coming out to oppose fascism .
Every attempt to disrupt ICE operations is a direct assault on American elections and is an attempt to subvert the Constitution. We voted to give power to Trump to deport every illegal immigrant, and Congress voted to explicitly fund ICE operations to do the same.
For those who swore the oath “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”, domestic enemies to the Constitution has never been more clear in the context of an election that handed a clear mandate to deport illegal immigrants.
The ultimate irony though is that the very same people who illegally shut down churches, illegally forced masks and vaccines are now screaming about tyranny because a duly elected President is executing on the mandate he was given by the voters. Go take a seat please, the adults are in charge, and we’ll be electing JD Vance + RFK in 2028 to continue the critical work of ensuring America continues its global dominance just as it has done for 200+ years.
That was a referendum on the price of eggs.
The people you named can’t run a rally.
You may be on hollow ground over there.
If you think protesting and observing ICE constitutes “an attempt to subvert the Constitution,” maybe you should brush up on our founding documents and the motivations of their authors.
I was there, and I’ve been to many other protests, and it was shocking. ICE are cruel small men, and need to be stopped. So worried for all the people in detention. Thank you for your coverage!