Free Republic

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Sacramento Police officers clad in riot gear raided an immigration protest on Tuesday. Officers temporarily shut down N Street between Sixth and Seventh streets and got right to work, lifting heavy pieces of furniture including beds and couches, and it all up into truck beds. “We’ve had complaints of their presence noise and inability to get through the sidewalk,” said Sacramento Police Capt. Norm Leong.Police say they collected what’s been “illegally stored” for the last five days. But activists say they were just protesting President Trump’s immigration policies, and claim what may have looked like a campsite...

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Tuesday denied claims by the union representing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement employees that city police officers would not respond to their urgent calls for service during a recent occupation by protesters. Through attorney Sean Riddell, the union on Monday criticized the mayor for his laissez faire approach to a protest at the local ICE field office, which lasted five weeks. When the protest began, Wheeler announced that he would not allow Portland police officers to be "sucked into a conflict" over the protest and said federal police would be responsible for protecting their own building...

Cleanup has begun at what, for five weeks, was the Occupy ICE PDX camp. Portland Police Bureau officers limited access to the site earlier today, calling it a biohazard

ICE officers sent a cease-and-desist letter Monday to the mayor in Portland, Oregon, demanding he apologize for ordering city police to stand down as protesters ravaged the immigration agency’s headquarters and menaced its employees. Agency employees say they were harassed, followed and had their personal vehicles damaged when protesters tried to block them from leaving. They say Portland police refused to respond, under orders from Mayor Ted Wheeler, who said he backed the protesters over the feds. With police on the sidelines the Occupy ICE protesters shut down U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s building on Macadam Avenue for a week...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Police have cleared the scene of a protest that blocked elevators in a Kentucky building that houses an immigration court. The group Occupy ICE Louisville says a group of people went into the building in downtown Louisville on Thursday morning to protest the separation of immigrant families. The protesters linked their arms together inside plastic tubes. A large number of police outside the building dispersed just before noon as the protesters were taken away in a paddy wagon.

Portland protest leader Micah Rhodes is back in jail on allegations that he violated terms of his probation by having contact with minors. Rhodes, 24, was ordered to stay away from anyone under 18 years old after he was convicted this year on three counts of second-degree sexual abuse for having illicit sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl in Washington County and a 17-year-old boy in Multnomah County. The sexual abuse occurred in 2014 and 2015, and Rhodes was 20 and 21 years old at the time. Washington County Circuit Judge Janelle Wipper and Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jerry Hodson...

Eight protesters were arrested Wednesday morning as they blocked a van from leaving a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Southwest Portland. A video shows a band of protesters linked at the arms, blocking the van from exiting the facility. It also shows several of them being detained by federal officers, who deployed pepper balls at close range, as well as pepper spray. One detained protester ran away, but the video appears to show authorities leading that protester back to the scene. Robert Sperling, a Federal Protective Service spokesman, said officers went after that protester but didn't know whether...

Reflections on the nature of today's demonstrations… Right at the beginning of the Bill of Rights, our Constitution clearly protects American citizens’ right to speak freely on political issues. The First Amendment promises that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” The Constitution doesn’t grant them an audience; it doesn’t promise that anyone will listen to them, or read their writings or join in their demonstration. It just allows them to do it, and leaves it up to local and state governments to manage...

Philadelphia police abruptly raided and destroyed the “Occupy ICE” encampment set up by protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Center City on Thursday afternoon. “Stay calm! Stay calm!” a protester shouted as police used bicycles to push through the encampment and knock down the protesters’ tents and canopies, which had been set up in the area since Monday evening as part of a national movement calling for the abolition of ICE. Local demonstrators also have called for the closure of the federal detention center in Berks County and an end to local collaboration with federal immigration officials.The...