Civil Liberties and Policing

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon in Oregon issued a preliminary injunction Monday sharply limiting Department of Homeland Security agents’ use of tear gas, pepper balls and other crowd-control munitions at protests outside the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. The order, stemming from an ACLU of Oregon lawsuit on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists, bars chemical and projectile munitions unless someone poses an imminent threat of physical harm and forbids firing at the head, neck or torso absent legal justification for deadly force. Simon cited video evidence showing DHS officers spraying OC spray directly into the faces of peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators engaged only in passive resistance and deploying gas and pepper balls into crowds without dispersal warnings, calling the conduct "objectively chilling" of First Amendment activity. The injunction also bans indiscriminate pepper spray that hits bystanders, defines trespassing and refusal to move as passive rather than active resistance, and provisionally certifies a class covering all peaceful protesters and reporters at the ICE site while the case proceeds. DHS has maintained agents followed training and used minimal force, but this ruling adds to a growing line of federal decisions scrutinizing how federal forces police domestic demonstrations around immigration and other hot-button issues.