On January 31, demonstrators in Portland marched to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office in Portland. In response, without provocation, ICE agents attacked them with a variety of dangerous weapons, blanketing the area in tear gas and injuring a number of small children. Rather than intimidating the people of Portland, this brazen assault has only galvanized them against ICE. In the following account, participants in the demonstration recount the events as they unfolded.

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“I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue, I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.”

-Emma Goldman

On January 31, a day after the National Shutdown in protest against the brutality that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is perpetrating around the country, a five-thousand-strong rally and march got underway in Elizabeth Caruthers Park in Portland, Oregon. The theme was “Labor says ICE out!”

Unlike previous mass protests, which avoided direct contact with the Department of Homeland Security, the stated goal was to march on the infamous ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Field Office. The Field Office has become a daily target of protests ranging from five to 200 people since the uptick in DHS aggression last summer.

Many local radicals saw more potential in this march than the usual demonstrations. It was planned well in advance, with an intentional focus on class, capitalism, and logistics, and organizers made an effort to reach out to various unions and other organizations. Consequently, an unspoken consensus emerged that, after the march and rally concluded, there would be an earnest attempt to shut down the ICE facility. This understanding was in part inspired by the shift in dynamics within the crowd that had gathered at the Field Office after the murder of Alex Pretti on January 24.

However, the DHS forces at the Field Office did not wait to deploy their weaponry.

As the march made its way to the ICE building on South Macadam Avenue, Federal Protective Services agents and Customs and Border Protection agents showed themselves. Some people in the march jeered at them. The mercenaries responded to their words and gestures by attacking the crowd with an array of “less-lethal” weapons, blanketing the area with tear gas and firing on the crowd at random with pepper-balls and flash-bang grenades.

This march involved more children than the average demonstration in Portland, including some very small children. The federal agents did not spare the children, but attacked them with the same viciousness with which they attacked adults. Gruesome images circulated afterwards, showing children struggling with the effects of tear gas.

It’s important to point out that many of these kids are not simply passive victims. They, too, have been resisting the regime. Many of them had walked out of class on January 30 and participated in marches that were as radical as the labor march of January 31. For example, self-organized students at McDaniel High School walked out that day and marched down a major arterial road. The speeches at the closing of that march were at least as fiery as those at the labor march, according to young people who attended both rallies. At the closing rally of the McDaniel walk-out, an elder Portland Black Panther joined students who spoke out, as immigrants or the children of immigrants, on the gravity of our current situation and the need for action.

Some of those students attended the labor march, many of them prepared with personal protective equipment, knowing that officers could attack the march regardless of whether the participants were “peaceful.” The brutality of the federal agents comes as no great surprise to those who understand state violence as a means of imposing social control rather than responding to actual threats—but it is infuriating nonetheless.

Forced away from the facility, the crowd began to make their way back to the park, shouting at the feds between gasps for air. There were so many people that it was difficult for many to escape the noxious clouds, which extended for over six blocks.

Once most of the marchers were back in the park, the closing rally began. After a lot of eye flushes, a few speeches, and a rendition of Bella Ciao, the labor event was formally concluded. Someone announced that those who were willing and able should head back to the Field Office to show the feds how we felt about their actions. Considering how many people have witnessed footage of two public executions by ICE over the past month, the repressive violence that they perpetrated in Portland on January 31 should be less shocking now. Nonetheless, experiencing it firsthand made it concrete for many participants in the demonstration: federal agents are our enemies. As Greek anarchists said in 2008, sometimes tear gas helps you to see more clearly.

As the sun set, hundreds of angry people gathered in front of the Field Office. Soon, the sound of rhythmic banging cut through the chants and shouts; the crowd turned to see masked individuals banging on a dumpster as they wheeled it towards the driveway of the facility. The driveway is the major bottleneck for getting vehicles—and thus officers and prisoners—in and out of the facility. Cheers erupted as demonstrators thrust the dumpster against the gate.

A line of agents opened the gate to secure the dumpster. While this was happening, some people began to dismantle the plywood protection on one side of the facility. After the feds regrouped, they sent out another team to tackle people in the crowd. Though a couple people met their charge with projectiles and others responded by pulling people free of the feds’ grasp, the mercenaries fired another round of tear gas, pepper-balls, and flash-bang grenades, clearing the crowd enough to make some arrests.

Despite their violence, people are not intimidated. The tone has started to change here in Portland. We’ve been seeing the return of tactics that were widespread in 2020. Some people show up wearing gloves, prepared to throw the tear-gas canisters back at the mercenaries who deploy them; others are coming in behind them with leaf blowers, trying to blow the smoke back at the feds, or using traffic cones to put the gas canisters out.

Elsewhere that evening, a far-right streamer had a bad experience. This person and his henchmen have been harassing anti-ICE protesters for months, sometimes benefitting from protection offered by protest marshals. Instead of getting into pointless shouting matches with him, some anti-fascists apparently chose to confront him when he wasn’t expecting it. There are certainly cases in which far-right pundits have built careers out of claiming to have been victimized; but in this case, this action seems to have diminished the capacity of the far right to support the feds. The right-wing streamers sent out a call to attack an anti-ICE event on the following day, February 1—but despite all their bluster, they didn’t show up.

That night, many of us learned that an Enterprise Rent-a-Car facility had been attacked a few days ago for collaborating with ICE. It has been well known in Portland since 2020 that Enterprise Rent-a-Car collaborates with ICE, but it was only confirmed on a national scale after Chicago officials mentioned it in the recent plate-switching scandals there. The news also circulated that one ICE agent, Rita Soraghan, had finally moved out of her home after two noise demonstrations had taken place there in recent months.

ICE is abducting massive numbers of people, sending them to what are basically concentration camps to perform forced labor. Some of those they kidnap are sent to face considerable risk of death in their countries of origin, exiled to prisons in a country they have never visited, or outright disappeared. ICE agents are openly murdering people who oppose these vile deeds in the streets. The courts and politicians are powerless at best and complicit at worst. Whatever strong words we hear from the mayors of Minneapolis and Portland, they only wish to repair the façade of social peace so that the institutions of power can maintain control. It’s likely going to take a revolt on scale much greater than what happened in 2020 to change course.

Anarchists could not have manifested the 2020 uprising alone. But bravery is contagious and we helped to light the beacons that drew people out into open revolt. More recently, the Telsa Takedown protests proved that low-intensity direct action targeting logistics can bridge the gap between clandestine attacks and symbolic public protest activity. All of us, however we are situated, can do things to pave the way for the changes that we desperately need.

As the violence of ICE and CBP and borders in general make their way further into the interior, the situation is only going to get worse until we take decisive mass action. But Portland and Minneapolis do not fight alone. Instead of retreating, people are coming together to protect and support each other. More and more are choosing to intervene whenever and wherever the feds appear.

For better or worse, this is only the beginning.