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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents clashed with demonstrators for a third consecutive evening Monday, making at least three arrests on the doorstep of the agency’s South Portland headquarters, which has become ground zero in an escalating standoff over deportations.
The confrontation ended, as it usually has, with a physical confrontation between protesters and heavily armored ICE agents, with the feds deploying less-lethal munitions.
Hours earlier, two men from the Portland suburbs were arraigned on federal felony charges stemming from last weekend’s melee at the ICE facility. The U.S. District Attorney for Oregon charged Ginovanni Brumbelow, 21, of Gresham and Joshua Cartrette, 46, of Oregon City with assaulting a federal law enforcement officer. Both were released on bail.
The charges resolved something of a mystery from the chaotic scene on the South Waterfront on Saturday afternoon, where several hundred protesters broke off from a larger, peaceful march to trek to ICE headquarters and were met with tear gas and munitions. Multiple reporters, including WW’s correspondent, described ICE making arrests during a riot. But unlike Portland police, federal officials had not issued statements describing whom they had arrested and for what.
Criminal complaints now offer the feds’ version of events.
The documents say that after protesters broke through the front entrance of the building, additional Customs and Border Protection Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, agents were brought in to protect the facility.
According to affidavits from an FBI investigator, Brumbelow hit a BORTAC agent in the head with the pointed wooden tip of a protest sign. Law enforcement took Brumbelow into custody and booked him in the Multnomah County Detention Center. The criminal complaint and arrest warrant call for a charge of felony assault of a federal officer, punishable by up to eight years in federal prison.
Another affidavit accuses Cartrette of pushing a BORTAC agent and kicking tear gas cans toward multiple agents. The tear gas cans did not hit ICE agents, documents say. Simple assault is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in federal prison, but the assault is a felony when it involves physical contact with the victim.
Calls to Brumbelow and Cartrette’s federal public defenders were not immediately returned.
Portland police have arrested 16 people around the ICE building since Thursday. The conflict at the building has drawn the interest of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, while Mayor Keith Wilson has warned federal officials that Portland has no interest in the presence of the National Guard.
Along South Bancroft Street, where the ICE building stands, hostilities continued Monday night.
The group of about 30 or 40 protesters at 8:30 pm gradually swelled to 50 or 60 by about 10:30 pm outside ICE headquarters, which had just been encased in large sheets of plywood covering all windows and doors. The protesters used bullhorns for chants, taunts, and insults, both obscene and comic, to the ICE agents who stood behind the large barred gate on the driveway leading into the headquarters. About seven or eight members of the Portland Police Bureau watched from a distance of about 75 yards but did not engage.
At about 10:40 pm, ICE agents swung the barred steel gate open, revealing a phalanx of about 11 armored, shield-bearing federal agents, with additional officers directly behind them. At least two snipers were on the crown of the building overlooking the street and sidewalk in front of the building.
The federal agents advanced on the protesters, about six to eight of whom were kneeling behind shields on the driveway to the ICE building, but most of whom were on the sidewalk. As the two rows met, scuffling and some fighting broke out. No weapons were visible among the protesters, though at least one water bottle was thrown. The federal agents knocked over many of the protesters, while the additional armed officers fired streams of stingballs. Protesters were detained by being jumped on by four or five agents. Tear gas was not deployed.
This scuffle lasted approximately seven minutes and included at least three protesters being taken away. The ICE agents closed the large steel gate.
On Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney for Oregon issued a single criminal charge from Monday’s events. A 21-year-old Portland man was charged with disobeying a lawful order.