President Trump has dispatched U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and Federal Marshals to join local police in our hometown of Portland to suppress, with unabashed violence, the ongoing protests against systemic racism and policing as an institution. Federal agents have since openly assaulted and abducted protestors, and the President and other administration officials have threatened or announced plans to send officers to other U.S. cities — many with large Black populations — where ongoing, robust organizing against police violence has threatened the status quo.
DHS and local police are drawing on tactics that militarized U.S. forces have long used against BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) abroad and at home to suppress resistance to oppression. These are the very agencies doling out violence that our immigrant communities know too well.
Innovation Law Lab denounces these actions of violence and intimidation. We continue to be in solidarity with BIPOC organizers and those alongside them in the struggle for justice. Black lives matter!
