PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — Federal agents in Portland are barred for two more weeks from assaulting and arresting journalists for doing their jobs — an order a federal judge said was necessary based on the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement that its agents would stay in the city until the government sees improvement in what it called the “dynamic and volatile” situation there.
Ruling from the bench Thursday, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon extended the temporary restraining order he issued July 23, enjoining federal agents with the U.S. Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Protective Services from arresting, threatening to arrest or using physical force against anyone they know or reasonably should know is a journalist or legal observer.
Government attorneys argued the restraining order is no longer necessary, now that Oregon State Police have taken over the visible duties of protecting the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, where some of the city’s ongoing protests against police brutality and systemic racism have been centered.
But according to the Department of Homeland Security, it’s a “myth” that “DHS forces are standing down and withdrawing.”
“There has been no reduction in federal presence; federal law enforcement officers remain in Portland at augmented levels. Reports and implications to the contrary are irresponsible and dishonest,” the department said that in an Aug. 4 press release.
Judge Simon said the agency’s statements indicating it is still in the city were persuasive.
“Given that we still have federal officers here and what has been said by them and by the administration, that’s sufficient for good cause to extend this TRO for one more 14-day period,” Simon said. “Whether or not that changes in the next few weeks, we’ll see what happens.”
On Aug. 18, Simon will hear arguments on whether he should issue a preliminary injunction that would effectively extend the conditions in the restraining order through the resolution of the case. That would give the government its first chance to appeal Simon’s orders in the case — something Jordan Von Bokern, attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, has said the government will do.
If Simon issues a preliminary injunction, he said it may contain a provision to more clearly identify federal agents, perhaps with painted-on numbers that the agencies would track, he suggested. That’s because no one, not the journalists and legal observers who say they’ve been targeted for violence, nor the federal agencies the officers work for, has been able to produce the identities of agents accused of violating the restraining order.
On the very night Simon issued it, federal agents shot legal observer Kat Mahoney in the head with a pink paint ball as she stood across the street from the federal courthouse, observing the protest, according to Mahoney’s declaration. Later that same night, Mahoney says, a federal officer calmly doused her and three other legal observers “as though he were watering a line of flowers.”
And federal officers shot another legal observer with a rubber bullet after the restraining order was in place, according to court documents. In that situation, the officer stood four feet from a legal observer wearing a green National Lawyers Guild hat and fired directly at her chest, missing her heart by just a few inches.
Courthouse News has also filed a declaration in the case.
Von Bokern told Judge Simon the government still cannot say who the agents are that could potentially be held in contempt of Simon’s order.
“Your honor, we have not been successful in identifying those agents, to the extent that the allegations refer to real events, which is still disputed,” Von Bokern said.
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