By Andrew Selsky and Gillian Flaccus
Federal agents in green camouflage uniforms have been taking into custody people in the streets of Portland, not close to federal property that they were sent to protect, in what the ACLU of Oregon on Friday said "should concern everyone in the United States."
"Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping. The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered," said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said President Donald Trump, who deployed Department of Homeland Security officers to Portland, "is looking for a confrontation in Oregon in the hopes of winning political points in Ohio or Iowa."
"Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government," Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement late Thursday.
Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far in Portland, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday. Some have been detained by the federal courthouse, which has been the scene of protests. But others were grabbed blocks away.
One video showed two individuals in helmets and green camouflage with "police" patches grabbing a person on the sidewalk, handcuffing them and taking them into an unmarked vehicle.
"Who are you?" someone asks the pair, who do not respond. At least some of the federal officers deployed in Portland belong to the Department of Homeland Security.
"Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters," U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, said in a tweet.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations Oregon chapter said in a statement: "We are now seeing escalating tactics with protesters being unlawfully detained by unknown Federal law enforcement entities."
On Thursday night, federal officers deployed tear gas and fired less-lethal rounds into a crowd of protesters in Portland, hours after the head of the Department of Homeland Security visited the city and called the demonstrators, who are protesting racism and police brutality, "violent anarchists."
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Thursday that the U.S. is investing more than $100 million in the Caribbean region to crack down on weapons trafficking, help alleviate Haiti’s humanitarian crisis and support climate change initiatives.
At Cleveland's Urban Kutz Barbershop, customers can flip through magazines as they wait, or help themselves to drug screening tests left out in a box on a table with a somber message: “Your drugs could contain fentanyl. Please take free test strips.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday condemned a wave of “cruel” and “callous” state legislation curbing the rights, visibility and health care access of LGBTQ+ people, while causing the community to feel under attack for being who they are.
Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the global Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America through his Christian Coalition, has died. He was 93.
The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case, ordering the creation of a second district with a large Black population.
Mike Pence opened his presidential bid with an unusually forceful critique of former President Donald Trump over Jan. 6, his temperament and abortion on Wednesday as he became the first vice president in modern history to challenge his former running mate.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasted no time going after Donald Trump while launching his presidential campaign on Tuesday, calling the former president and current Republican primary front-runner a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog" and arguing that he's the only one who can stop him.
Saying gender identity is real, a federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
With concerns about misinformation spreading online, European Union officials want to more closely regulate artificial intelligence, and they're asking the world's biggest tech companies for help.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Ed Markey, and Mazie Hirono sent a letter to top officials at Twitter expressing their concerns over the platform's privacy policy.
