Hysterical hyperbole is the norm today as Democrats are screaming that federal agents in unmarked vehicles are kidnapping people off the streets of Portland, Oregon with no rhyme or reason, and throwing them into unmarked vans. They’re probably going to force them to make Nike shoes!
The same leftists were screaming about federal officers wearing blue shirts with tactical vests but have no patches or badges, while they were protecting federal buildings in Washington, DC.
It’s about time we find out the actual role of federal law enforcement and how it fits in with traditional policing. In other words, the Democrat mayors and governors, and unfortunately Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, don’t know their derriere from their elbow of what they’re talking about when they claim what the feds are doing is unconstitutional. It’s not.
On Friday, Customs and Border Patrol official Mark Morgan tweeted out an acknowledgment that agents were not wearing name badges. He said this was in order to protect them from retaliation. ANTIFA doxes police, and though local law enforcement normally enforces officers wear name plates, there’s no law that says the feds have to do that, and federal agents are not subjected to local law enforcement procedures for things like that.
However, Morgan said that the officers did wear unique identifiers. In one photograph, “ZT1” is visible above an officer’s agency patch. Most of the officers had the word POLICE on their jackets. The Left is just lying again.
Unmarked vans are nothing new. Did the federal officers snatch people off the street and toss them into an unmarked vehicle? Yeah, they did, but so what? The tactic was to grab up leaders of crowds who were trying to destroy federal property and move them to a safe location away from the crowds for questioning.
When there is no warrant, an arrest can be made when there is probable cause. People were being arrested on probable cause for having committed crimes involving the federal courthouse in Portland.
Our personnel are clearly marked as federal LEOs & have unique identifiers. You will not see names on their uniforms b/c these same violent criminals use this information to target them & their families, putting both at risk. As Acting Commissioner, I will not let that happen!
— CBP Mark Morgan (@CBPMarkMorgan) July 17, 2020
Acting Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered on Friday in an interview with Sarah McCammon, and his answers help explain everything that was being done by federal officers in Portland.
When asked how far from federal property are federal agents allowed to operate, Cuccinelli said, “We will pick them up in front of the courthouse. If we spot them elsewhere, we will pick them up elsewhere.”
So how are the feds able to go in there? Well, the nightly outbursts of violence at the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse, which includes repeated arson attempts are reason enough. There is no law that says that the federal government has to wait until one of these attempts succeeds in burning down the courthouse before sending out federal officers to protect it. Nor is DHS required to accommodate the wishes of either the local or state elected officials that it stay away.
The federal government is sovereign to the states. It doesn’t need a governor’s or mayor’s permission to enforce federal law. If local police will not protect federal property, the federal government is 100 percent allowed to. Contrary to some Fake News reports, the federal agents making arrests in Portland can be seen wearing identifying patches on their uniforms, with “police” emblazoned on their vests, and Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said they’re Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. The federal officers have are using rented, unmarked vans because they are on temporary duty assignments in Portland. It’s really as simple as that.
So there you have it. Everything the Trump administration has been doing to protect federal property is legit. Howling Democrats are either ignorant of the law or they’re lying when they say what federal officers are doing is unconstitutional.
It’s pretty simple. Law enforcement everywhere is accountable to the citizens through their elected officials. The mayors and governors are the ones who order police and other law enforcement types to do their jobs, but in many cases recently, they order them to not do their jobs for political reasons.
If the people of Portland, Seattle, New York and Chicago are okay with having anarchy and deadly shootings in their streets, they can continue to vote for Democrats who tie the hands of police and order them to back down. If the rest of the country wants federal law enforcement to be just as useless, they can vote that way in November. In the meantime, however, the hyperbolic references like saying Trump is kidnapping people off the street or by comparing US federal agents to Guantanamo Bay, Stormtroopers and Nazis needs to stop.
Rich is a conservative, syndicated opinion writer and owner of MAGA-Chat.com. He writes about politics, culture, liberty, and faith.
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