US border agent shoots 2 in Portland traffic stop as national tensions rise
DHS says a suspected Venezuelan gang member tried to ram agents with a car, a day after a fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis
Tensions over US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown rose across the United States on Thursday after the second shooting involving immigration officers in two days, deepening rifts between state and federal officials over how and why the shootings occurred.
Then in Oregon a US Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland on Thursday afternoon. Again, local officials, who immediately called for calm, said they could not verify the federal government’s account of the incident.
In both cases, Democratic mayors and governors demanded the Trump administration withdraw federal officers, who have been deployed largely to Democratic-led cities in moves approved of by many of the president’s supporters after Trump campaigned on a promise to deport undocumented immigrants.
Democrats and civil rights activists have decried the aggressive enforcement operations as an unnecessary provocation.