Above photo: Portland, Oregon protest demands shutdown of ICE facility.
Portland, OR – Despite a rainstorm, hundreds of Portlanders mobilized on Saturday, October 25 to the Portland ICE Facility to protest the deployment of the National Guard and increased ICE attacks, and to demand the city revoke the land use permit for the ICE Facility. One protester was arrested during the event.
In less than a month the city can begin the process of revoking the permit for the ICE facility.
“It is not [the Portland city council] that lends its permission to operate the ICE facility, but ours. As such, the decision is ours to end permissive behaviors to rogue groups [such as ICE] that seek solely to break our common bonds,” Jason Ohmann, a protester and member of the safety team at the protest stated, adding, “It is important to protest ICE to protect all the members of our community – we are not asking them to heed our wishes and stand down. We are showing them that eventually we can give them no other option but to do so.”
Emboldened by the promise of the National Guard deployment, DHS officials guarding the ICE Facility have increased aggression towards protesters with the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray. One protester was arrested and detained, while other protesters were indiscriminately shot with rubber bullets.
One protester, Catie Donovan, expressed, “ICE agents have violated the rules of detention by holding people 12 hours and overnight. This continues to prove that they don’t care about the safety or protection of the human beings they are taking off the street,” saying that ICE agents “are unnecessarily aggressive. Shooting rubber bullets indiscriminately into the crowd from the safety of their roof.”
Currently the National Guard is barred from entering Portland until 5 p.m. on Thursday, October 30. If the courts allow this deployment, the situation will escalate. The only option left for city officials is to heed the voices of Portlanders and revoke the ICE facility land use permit.
