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In light of a recent federal court decision lifting restrictions on “less-lethal” crowd control measures, the question on many minds Friday evening outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility was whether the tear gas would come out.
The short answer is no, although Portland Police arrested five near the South Waterfront facility and one officer injured by a thrown rock was taken to a hospital. Despite some tension and minor injuries, May Day was a far cry from nights like Jan. 31 when federal officers gassed a far larger crowd, including children and seniors.
On a day of protest around the state, a location that’s become a focal point of rage at the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign saw a familiar scene play out. Gas masks. Inflatables. Chants of “Shame on you!” Bare butts directed at rooftop feds with binoculars.
“Basically we’re all here to express our opposition and in a larger sense to protest against the whole Trump administration—the war, the economic dislocation taking place,” said rallygoer Peter Ford, a regular outside the ICE facility. “I come here generally as a peacekeeper. But in my time, I started to really appreciate the community of people that’s down here. And this is a weird night for the community.”
The first of May has long been associated with the labor movement around the world. This year, Oregonians around the state rallied for various causes, chief among them worker and immigrant rights. In Eugene, they rallied against layoffs in the public school system. At Portland State University, members of the Young Democratic Socialists of America sat in at the school president’s office.
At the Capitol Mall in Salem, Gov. Tina Kotek said Oregon won’t be bullied into abandoning its values.
“Immigrant workers are the backbone of businesses that sustain our daily lives,” Kotek says. “Immigrants are our neighbors, our friends, our families. We must keep up the fight and keep working together. No one should be afraid to go to work, take their child to school, or seek medical care because of where they come from.”
Starting at noon, around 2,500 people gathered downtown for an International Workers Day event that involved 90 organizations including unions, faith groups and nonprofits. In the afternoon, hundreds met in the South Park Blocks for a Kids May Day Rally organized by the Portland Association of Teachers on what was a furlough day for Portland Public Schools. At some point, a rightwing counter-protester, identified by independent outlet Full Rev Media as “Tommy Boi,” saw his vehicle vandalized.
Around 7:15 pm, marchers from Elizabeth Caruthers Park joined the scene at the ICE facility, adding several hundred to the dozens already there. At this point, the intersection of South Bancroft Street and South Moody Avenue became effectively closed to vehicle traffic.
Yellow-clad Portland Police officers on bikes were stationed in packs a block or two in each direction. A number of the Portland officers wore street clothes and mixed with the crowd. Among them was PPB assistant chief Franz Schoening who described a new law enforcement approach that favors deescalation and isolated arrests, when necessary, over broad crowd control measures.
The approach includes white shirt-wearing dialog liaison officers—or DLOs—charged with leading communication with protesters.
“Over the last year-and-a-half, two years, we’ve really shifted more to facilitation of protests, rather than looking at them as a crowd management or crowd control event,” Schoening told WW, adding, “I think it’s going pretty well.”
Another face in the crowd was Clifford Stott, a British psychology professor and expert on crowd dynamics now under contract to advise PPB on its response to protests. He was evaluating PPB officers and could be seen holding his phone in the air alongside protesters.
A number of others in the crowd were residents of nearby buildings—curious, concerned, many of them liberal Portlanders who say they agree with protesters about ICE and Donald Trump. A man named Alex who lives in the nearby Gray’s Landing apartment complex reacted angrily when a masked protester threw an empty bottle on the ground in front of him.
“It’s the same thing every single night,” he says. “It’s different today because it’s May Day; there’s more people. But on a typical night it’s the same 15 to 20 people who I don’t believe are here to support immigrants. I think they’re just here to heckle police.”
As usual outside the ICE facility, as the sun set, tensions rose. Protesters with hoarse voices yelled, “How many families have you torn apart today?” and crowded the facility’s main driveway—the scene of so many clashes in recent years. Several loudly shook the gates. Federal agents with faces covered could be seen on the other side and on the roof where former Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem stood last year for a photo op.
At points, a woman’s voice pierced the clamor to issue a now-familiar warning—“police have observed criminal activity and will be making targeted arrests”—which elicited jeers from the crowd.
Around 8:30 pm, several dozen officers with PPB and Oregon State Police cleared protesters from the facility’s driveway. Critics say this kind of federal-state cooperation violates Portland and Oregon’s “sanctuary” status or, at the very least, the spirit of those policies.
In the end, Portland officers arrested five people near the ICE facility on May Day, according to a news release. Two are suspected of “earlier” criminal activity. The others were “targeted” after being allegedly observed breaking the law. Protesters threw rocks and bottles at police, according to PPB. Two officers were injured. One received non-life threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital; the other was treated at the scene.
Since June, PPB has made 94 arrests related to ICE protest activity.
Protesters say their presence at the South Waterfront will persist so long as the excesses of the Trump administration continue. Signs and chants referenced the First Amendment and Trump’s efforts to silence and arrest his critics. They showed outrage over his ties to a billionaire sex trafficker and the administration’s efforts at a cover-up.
“Because it hasn’t stopped,” a man named Derek Boyd said when asked why he continued to protest at the ICE facility. “They’re still taking people.”
