D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser joined mayors from across the country in calling on the Trump administration to immediately withdraw federal forces from American cities, and to halt any plans to send in additional agents. In a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General William Barr and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, they called the deployment an “abuse of power.”
“Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values,” the mayors wrote.
In a second letter, the 15 mayors urged congressional leaders to investigate the administration’s decision to send and threaten to send forces from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Back in June, the mayors write that federal law enforcement took “extreme action” against D.C. protesters near Lafayette Square without Bowser’s approval. In recent days, President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy federal forces in Seattle to “clear out” a protest area and to Chicago to “clean up” the city, and federal agents sent to Portland have beaten and tear gassed protesters there.
Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli recently said that the administration intends “to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we’re responsible for around the country.”
The mayors of cities from Seattle to Atlanta to Boston point out the protests have been mostly peaceful, and say it is “chilling” that the Trump administration has formed and deployed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Rapid Deployment Unit to conduct crowd control on city streets and detain residents. They say those officers’ actions have escalated situations and increased the risk of violence against both civilians and local law enforcement officers.
The letter to Barr and Wolf gives examples of the “significant force” used by federal forces against protestors — including shooting one in the head — who the mayors say are just exercising their constitutional rights. “These are tactics we expect from authoritarian regimes – not our democracy,” the letter reads.
The mayors also expressed concern that these federal forces are not trained in urban community policing techniques such as de-escalation, that there is no oversight and that these law enforcement units are being deployed for political purposes.
