At least 140 DHS and federal police deployed to Portland have been injured since May

Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said three Federal Protective Service officers, who are DHS employees and are tasked by law with guarding more than 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, will have permanent eye damage resulting from the attacks protesters waged against them with lasers.

“That green laser is what we’re talking about. So that’s a new tactic that our Federal Protective Service officers have seen in Portland,” said Wolf, the sole witness at the hearing Thursday. “It’s very powerful. This is not the laser your cat or dog will chase on the ground. This is very — it hits the eyes. It will heat up the nucleus of the eye, and it will give it permanent damage. We’ve been able to address that with eye protection, but we have three officers who will likely lose some portion of their vision.”

Thirty-eight federal officers working in Portland have been doxxed, or had their identities and personal information leaked online, for the purpose of allowing others to stalk federal police and their families.

In total, 21 federal courthouses nationwide have been vandalized this summer since largely peaceful protests commenced in dozens of cities following the death of George Floyd, who was killed while in Minneapolis police custody in late May.

Johnson argued the protests that erupted across the country in the wake of Floyd’s death have not been peaceful and listed incidents that resulted in destruction to government and private property.

“At least 930 nonfederal law enforcement officers have been injured. At least one has died,” Johnson said. “Protesters in Nashville broke into City Hall and lit fires in late May. … Protesters in suburban Denver broke into a courthouse and lit fires. Protesters in Minneapolis burned down a police station. Others tried doing the same in Seattle. A ‘peaceful protest’ in Oakland in July ‘intensified,’ as news reports put it, after protesters set fires inside a courthouse and launched fireworks at officers.”

The committee’s top Republican said the violence has continued in select cities, which has hurt the law enforcement’s ability to prevent and respond to other crimes. Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, and Seattle saw rises in homicides by the end of July compared to the previous year.

“These people have died because criminals killed them. But they may have also died because police were constrained and prevented from doing their job to protect them,” Johnson said. “When you encourage disdain for police, you encourage criminals. When you do little or nothing to stop riots, you unleash anarchy. And when you encourage criminals and unleash anarchy, people die.”

DHS sent tactical and emergency response agents from the Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Portland in late June to help Federal Protective Service officers, who had become overwhelmed attempting to guard the Hatfield U.S. Courthouse and other federal buildings in the city.