House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the Trump administration’s deployment of federal law enforcement to Portland and other cities experiencing civil unrest.
“The use of stormtroopers under the guise of law and order is a tactic that is not appropriate to our country in any way,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters Thursday.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, said the use of federal agents against protesters in Oregon is “so un-American, so in keeping with third-world countries and dictatorships.”
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said on Tuesday he will not pull back agents deployed to Portland to help quell nightly rioting and protesting. Wolf has sent border patrol agents to the city to protect federal officials there who are under threat and not receiving adequate protection from local police, he said.
Wolf denied reports that unidentified law enforcement agents are snatching protesters off the streets and forcing them into unmarked cars. Wolf also rejected identifying the agents as stormtroopers, the term Pelosi used on Thursday.
But Democrats rejected Wolf’s explanation and said the administration should retreat.
“You haul somebody off the streets, don’t tell them who you are, why you’re doing it,” Schumer said. “It’s also unconstitutional.”
