Trump's Secret Police Arresting Suspects for...?

[_Icarus]

Unmarked vans are grabbing people in the dead of night in Portland, arresting them and then releasing them later because there was never any probable cause to arrest them in the first place. This is illegal, but par for the course for this corrupt, autocratic administration.

[_Chap]

Unmarked vans are grabbing people in the dead of night in Portland, arresting them and then releasing them later because there was never any probable cause to arrest them in the first place. This is illegal, but par for the course for this corrupt, autocratic administration.

How are people supposed to know that the people trying to bundle them into a van are actually police officers? Frankly, if I was in the US and some guys not in uniform and in an unmarked vehicle pulled up beside me and shouted 'In the van! We're police! " I would feel justified (indeed obligated) to resist by whatever means available to me.

Can we have a link to this story in a reliable source, please?

[_Jersey Girl]

Can we have a link to this story in a reliable source, please?

Sure. Pick one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/p ... tests.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... testers-in

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 457471002/

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/89227759 ... n-portland

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portland ... afc40096da

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077

https://time.com/5868087/portland-blm-p ... ent-Trump/

[_Chap]

Can we have a link to this story in a reliable source, please?

Sure. Pick one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/p ... tests.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... testers-in

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 457471002/

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/89227759 ... n-portland

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portland ... afc40096da

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077

https://time.com/5868087/portland-blm-p ... ent-Trump/

Thanks, but why the overkill? Did you consider my request in some way rude or inappropriate?

[_moksha]

Can we be certain that these were actual federal officers and not some Black Water or Russian-type mercenaries dressed up and on orders from the White House? Did they probe the detainees then partially erase their memories with a flashing stick device?

[_Chap]

Can we be certain that these were actual federal officers and not some Black Water or Russian-type mercenaries dressed up and on orders from the White House? Did they probe the detainees then partially erase their memories with a flashing stick device?

On orders from the White House? Certainly looks like it; they are by no means there at the invitation of the state or municipal governments, and they may be there illegally. Maybe Trump is hoping to provoke large-scale violence?

And what is Customs and Border Protection (CBP) doing in Portland, which is nowhere near a border?

An opinion piece addressing this issue:

Camouflaged federal agents have descended on Portland. Trump's DHS is out of control
Trevor Timm

A remarkable and nightmarish scene playing out in Portland should terrify anyone who cares about the US constitution: unmarked vans full of camouflaged and unidentified federal agents are pulling up next to protesters on street corners, then snatching and arresting them with no explanation.

If this were happening in Venezuela or Iran, the US government would be threatening international sanctions. Since it’s happening in the US, Trump’s acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary is defending the decision and even promising more.

The stories from witnesses and those who have been picked up by the unmarked vans – apparently being operated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is under DHS’s control – are downright terrifying. One victim told the New York Times: “One of the officers said, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ and just grabbed me and threw me into the van. Another officer pulled my beanie down, so I couldn’t see.”

The same person told the Washington Post: “I was terrified. It seemed like it was out of a horror/sci-fi, like a Philip K Dick novel. It was like being preyed upon.” Still another told Portland’s Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB): “I see guys in camo. Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, ‘Oh crap. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.’”

The incidents being described sound eerily reminiscent of the CIA’s post-9/11 rendition program under George W Bush, where intelligence agents would roll up in unmarked vans in foreign countries, blindfold terrorism suspects (many of whom turned to be innocent) and kidnap them without explanation. Only instead of occurring on the streets of Italy or the Middle East, it’s happening in downtown Portland.

Virtually all of Portland’s local leaders, as well as Oregon’s leading representatives in Congress, have condemned the situation and called for an investigation. But so far, DHS and the Trump administration do not seem deterred.

The acting secretary of DHS, Chad Wolf, released a video statement Friday lamenting that Portland had declined the department’s “offer” of “support”. So DHS went ahead and sent in its thugs anyway. DHS’s list of reasons for invading Portland and implementing its terror operation, amid what it calls “rampant long-lasting violence”, consists mostly of graffiti incidents and minor property damage.

Their authoritarianism is no longer creeping – the DHS and CBP are acting as full-on secret police
Portland is almost 400 miles from the Canadian border and 80 miles from the Pacific ocean, by the way. It’s unclear what legal authority, if any, allows CBP to be terrorizing the streets to hunt down graffiti artists—even if they think they can operate anywhere that’s 100 miles from a border. In other words, it’s illegal, or it should be.

Worse, judging from witnesses, CBP isn’t just “defending” federal buildings, as it claims. As OPB reported: “Interviews ... show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity.” Protesters told OPB they “think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration”.

CBP has also reportedly indiscriminately fired teargas at protesters despite a judge banning Portland’s police from doing so, permanently injured a person with a shot to the head from a so-called “less lethal” gun, and fired its weapons at at least one journalist.

DHS, even in the pre-Trump era, has been an enormous waste of taxpayer resources, full of massive government waste and abuse, and a civil liberties disaster to boot. Back in 2015, I called for it to be abolished in the pages of the Guardian. Under Trump it has reached new levels of depravity. Its disturbing anti-immigration actions have shown agents seemingly going out of their way to be as cruel as possible to those they apprehend.

Anyone only has to read the news from the past few weeks to witness DHS’s corruption and creeping authoritarianism: in one story, government auditors have found that the CBP spent money meant for food and medical supplies for detained migrants on ATVs and dirt bikes for themselves. In another, DHS deployed Predator drones, helicopters and airplanes to spy on Black Lives Matter protesters in 15 American cities.

With their actions in Portland, their authoritarianism is no longer creeping – the DHS and CBP are acting as full-on secret police. If there are not steep consequences for these disturbing actions, there will be no limits on where this will lead.

Trevor Timm is the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation

That last link has some interesting and potentially useful stuff in it.

[_moksha]

Here is a video smuggled out of Washington detailing some of the secret plans. I suspect they originated from Steve Banon or Stephen Miller and were then put into motion by more complex minds within Russia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=eoCcpMW8fSs

[_Res Ipsa]

Cool! Come January, Biden's going to have his own private army.

[_Jersey Girl]

Thanks, but why the overkill? Did you consider my request in some way rude or inappropriate?

Because I wanted you to be able to choose a source that you trust as reliable.

[_Icarus]

Steve Schmidt goes on epic rant and demands Oregon’s governor arrest Trump’s ‘Secret Police’ in Portland

Prominent political activist Steve Schmidt on Friday demanded the National Guard be deployed to deal with the Department of Homeland Security agents terrorizing Portland.

Shocking videos have emerged of what are believed to be DHS agents. The men are clad in camouflage military fatigues. They do not have badges nor patches identifying who they are, but many have “police” patches on their body armor vests.

A protester was almost killed after being shot in the head by the security forces.

The agents have also been snatching protesters off the streets in what are essentially renditions.

Gov. Kate Brown (D-OR) accused Trump of doing it to boost his embattled 2020 re-election campaign.

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has been blasted for a “blatant abuse of power.”

All of this was too much for Lincoln Project strategist Steve Schmidt, who is calling on Gov. Brown to call out the National Guard to arrest the DHS troops.

Portland Oregon. The Governor of Oregon should deploy the State Police and the National Guard to arrest on site any heavily armed Paramilitary forces who are operating without ID’s, Badges and snatching Americans off of the street and stuffing them into unmarked vehicles. We live in the UNITED STATES of AMERICA. We are watching a Secret Police forming before our eyes and it is both an abomination and unacceptable. What agencies are these men with? What is their chain of command? What is their jurisdiction? Barr is Attorney General, not the Interior Minister of some thugocracy. Respectfully, where is the ACLU? Where is the outrage of the Democratic House Members that control the purse strings of whatever agency these men belong to? Where is the oversight? Why isn’t this issue being reported out on the front page of national news organizations including one that has attached itself to the phrase “Democracy dies in Darkness”? by the way, it certainly does when Federal snatch and grabs by “little green men” draw not so much a whimper of outrage. Why isn’t this footage in the A block of every Newscast in America? What is happening here? The fact that Federal Law Enforcement Officers are clad head to toe in camouflaged Military tactical uniforms is outrageous. This is utterly unacceptable in this country. We must not stand for this. We are witnessing an assault on Liberty, freedom and our Constitutionally protected rights. Enough already. Call your member of Congress and demand answers. Who are these men?