Six protesters were arrested by police in Portland, Oregon, late Thursday, as an appeal for calm from local leaders largely held despite growing outrage over federal immigration enforcement in the city after two people were shot by US border patrol agents.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified the two people who were shot in a statement on Friday as Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras and Luis David Nico Moncada, undocumented immigrants from Venezuela.
A department spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, told Fox News that both were suspected of ties to a Venezuelan gang, but that connection appeared to be less certain than originally stated by federal authorities in the immediate aftermath of the shootings.
The department did not offer documentation for that claim and the Guardian has not been able to confirm it.
Zambrano-Contreras and Moncada were shot on Thursday afternoon outside a Portland hospital. DHS said that US border patrol agents had stopped a vehicle to search for a person they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant connected to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. According to the agents, they opened fire when the driver of the vehicle tried to run them over, DHS said. “Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene,” DHS said in a statement.
A man who was at the medical building told the Oregonian he saw federal officers follow a Toyota pickup truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it. One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind them, before turning and speeding off.
The FBI’s Portland office said it is investigating the shooting.
Authorities have not confirmed the condition of the injured, but emergency dispatch audio obtained by FOX 12 Oregon indicated that the 911 call came from a man who said he was shot twice in the arm and his wife had been shot in the chest.
The shooting, which came one day after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, intensified criticism in Portland on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
Last year, Portland saw months of protest centered on an ICE processing facility in the city’s south waterfront. Donald Trump tried to deploy national guard members to the city in response, but the deployment was blocked by a federal judge who said the president’s claim that the city was “war-ravaged” as a result of small-scale protests “was simply untethered to the facts”.
On Thursday, city leaders forcefully condemned the shooting, while urging residents to protest peacefully.
Jeff Merkley, one of Oregon’s two Democratic senators, urged protesters to remain calm in light of the shooting. “Trump wants to generate riots,” he said in a post on X. “Don’t take the bait.”
A banner at the top of the Portland city government website late Thursday advised residents: “Respond with calm and purpose.”
The Portland police chief echoed those pleas. Bob Day said: “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”
Residents appeared to heed that call. On Thursday evening, about a hundred protesters gathered outside city hall in downtown Portland to chant: “Abolish ICE!” A smaller number of protesters also returned to the ICE facility, many of them dressed in the animal costumes that have helped defuse tensions in recent months. Later, police used force to clear protesters from the street outside the facility, arresting six, including a young man who usually wears an inflatable frog costume to protests but was in street clothes.
Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a news conference: “We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”
“We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts. Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”
Maxine Dexter, the Democratic representative for the district where the shooting took place, who is also a doctor, called on ICE to leave Portland.
“ICE has done nothing but inject terror, chaos, and cruelty into our communities,” Dexter said. “Trump’s immigration machine is using violence to control our communities – straight out of the authoritarian playbook. ICE must immediately end all active operations in Portland.”
Portland leaders were firm in demanding a local investigation. “We must allow our local law enforcement to do its work,” Dexter said. “There must be a comprehensive investigation without Trump’s interference.”
The Oregon attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said late on Thursday that his office was opening a formal investigation into the incident to examine whether “any federal officer acted outside the scope of their lawful authority”.
“We have been clear about our concerns with excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland and nationally,” Rayfield said.
On Thursday, the FBI took control of the investigation into the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence had been revoked.
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