President Donald Trump’s secret police force has been detaining and arresting Black Lives Matter protestors, reportedly including those who have committed no crimes, off the streets of Portland. Trump is now praising these camouflaged, masked, paramilitary officers in riot gear who don no insignias or name tags: “They grab ’em, a lot of people in jail,” Trump cheered, saying those arrested “hate our country.”
Now, as Homeland Security acting Secretary Chad Wolf and other administration officials have promised, these heavily-armed forces will be deployed into other American cities.
150 troops from agencies under the DHS umbrella, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be deployed onto the streets of Chicago this week, the Chicago Tribune reports.
“We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a press conference Monday morning.
Also Monday, President Donald Trump praised the federal officers who have thrown a portion of Portland into chaos, tear-gassing demonstrators including hundreds of sunflower-wielding moms who built a human shield to protect the BLM protestors. All were gassed over the weekend.
“We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you, in Portland they’ve been there three days, and they’ve really done a fantastic job in a very short period of time, no problem,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office.
“They grab ’em, a lot of people in jail, their leaders – these are anarchists, these are not protestors,” Trump lied.
(Political beliefs or affiliations should not determine how law enforcement officers treat alleged suspects.)
“People say ‘protestors’ – these people are anarchists,” Trump claimed. “These are people that hate our country, and we’re not going to let it go forward.”
Trump also falsely claimed elected officials are “afraid” of the protestors.
The president is trying to distinguish himself as the “law and order” candidate, but polling shows presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is seen as the law and order candidate.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear if the Trump administration has the legal authority to occupy Portland, “grab” U.S. citizens off the streets without reason, all while ignoring requests from the mayor and governor to leave.
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