March 2026
Feds Gas Portland Labor March Against ICE: For Mass Workers Action to Stop Deportations!
A week after Alex Pretti was murdered by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, a mass labor march against ICE in Portland was attacked by the feds. Agents on the roof of the ICE facility fired a barrage of tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets on the crowd which included older people and small children. (Photo: KOIN)
PORTLAND, OR. – The assassination of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents on January 24 sent shock waves across the country. This was particularly felt among trade unionists, since Pretti, an Intensive Care Unit nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, was a member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3669. Pretti’s murder came only weeks after the murder of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cop in Minneapolis. Around the country, nurses took to the streets to memorialize Pretti. National Nurses United held a week of action dedicated to protesting his murder and demand “ICE out of the hospitals.” On January 30, students across the country held a “national shutdown,” which brought out hundreds of high schoolers in Portland.
The next day, January 31, a mass march of trade unionists and supporters was held in Portland under the banner, “Labor Says: ICE Out!” The two nurses unions – Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) and Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP) – headed up the march, which was endorsed by 30 unions and other labor organizations. The turnout exceeded the organizers’ expectations: as union workers and their families poured into Elizabeth Caruthers Park that afternoon, even the Portland police reported that attendance was “well into the thousands.” The march began at 4 p.m., passing by the Portland ICE facility on South Macadam Avenue. Then, all hell broke out.
At the 31 January labor march for "ICE out!" with Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals and the Oregon Nurses Association in in the lead. (Photo: Portland Mercury)
After the front end of the procession, including the protest organizers, had marched past the facility, the feds suddenly launched a massive barrage of tear gas. Flash-bangs followed in short order, then pepper balls and rubber bullets. Hundreds of protestors, among them many young children and elderly people, were enveloped in the noxious gas, which drifted for several blocks into residential areas nearby where it had lingering effects for days. Scores of protestors found themselves blinded and overcome with burning eyes, skin and throats. Many were struck by coughing fits and vomited. Initially many sought to vacate the area, pushing out away from the gas. Videos show a young girl having her eyes rinsed to treat the effects of the burning gas.
While the leadership of the march continued on to their planned destination, returning to Elizabeth Caruthers Park, the crowd made up of nurses, teachers, construction trades and transport workers was caught off guard. The Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants (LCDI) contingent administered first aid to many of the unprepared marchers. Despite the lack of a clear plan, the protestors organized themselves on the ground to respond to the attack, using their signs as fans to keep the cloud of gas at bay. A large group staunchly remained in the street just past the thickest teargas cloud in defiance of the feds. The LCDI chanted, “ICE Out, shut it down, Portland is a union town,” and “Union workers lead the way, shut it down for Renee – In every town, in every city, shut it down for Alex Pretti.”
The feds’ barbaric display of vengeance set off a firestorm of protest. On February 3, a temporary restraining order (TRO) was issued prohibiting ICE officers from using crowd control munitions, including tear gas and other dispersal agents, at the South Macadam facility unless protestors pose a “direct and immediate threat.” Of course, for the sadistic Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem, who lied about the killings of Good and Pretti, peaceful protesting is such a “threat.” In another case, residents of the low-income housing complex Gray’s Landing across the street from the ICE facility sought a court order against the use of chemical irritants there, citing long-term harm to residents in frequent assaults by the feds.
The cloud of tear gas was so enormous that it spread to cover the crowd. (Photo: The Oregonian)
The use of tear gas on protestors in Portland has been so pervasive that the sheer quantity constitutes a risk to the population long after. In 2020, Portland banned using tear gas within city limits, though that didn’t stop the police. In 2022, state legislation permitted its use to control “riots.” In April 2023, a study by the Forensic Architecture group (which has produced detailed accounts of the genocidal destruction of Gaza) on the use of gas on “Teargas Tuesday,” 2 June 2020, demonstrated that “Portland police deployed gas well above harmful levels” (KGW8, 20 April 2023). At 15 surveyed locations, airborne concentrations of CS gas far exceeded the 2 mg/m3 levels at which exposure is “immediately dangerous to life and health” (according to federal agencies), in one case reaching 4,568 mg/m3, over 2,000 times the potentially lethal level.
Last summer, Donald Trump loudly threatened to send the National Guard into Portland, a special target of his hatred for the Democrat-run major cities. He was stopped by a federal judge. Though National Guard troops were eventually sent home from their stand-by positions outside Chicago and Portland, the threat of the National Guard invading those cities – and New York City – is still real. And in any case, thousands of federal agents have been unleashed on these cities, to hunt down immigrants and terrorize the population. What’s needed is to bring labor’s power to bear with a mass worker-led mobilization to drive la migra (immigration cops) out. “All out for FEDS OUT,” as an LCDI leaflet (7 November 2025) proclaimed.
Not Frogs and Peacocks or Looking to the Capitalist State ...
There is a pre-history to the events of January 31 and the brutal assault by federal agents on peaceful protesters. Ever since Trump sent feds into Portland last June to bolster ICE, the response of city leaders has been to make fun of these paramilitary forces, and to pester them with petty subterfuges. Protesters who regularly gathered outside the ICE facility dressed up in whimsical inflatable costumes of frogs, dinosaurs, cows, peacocks, a unicorn, and the Portland Chicken. On Sundays, there were “pajamas and pastries” parties. But as the LCDI leaflet said, “Farce, frog suits and pajama parties outside the ICE jail won’t deter the sinister forces determined to intimidate us and destroy our communities.”
Behind the mocking response to the ominous assault by ICE, Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, Federal Protective Service and other DHS outfits is the desire by Portland rulers to avoid at all costs a repeat of the explosive protests of summer 2020 over the racist police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It is also relevant that out of the 12 members of the Portland City Council, four are Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members, two more join with the DSA Democrats in a “progressive caucus,” or Peacock for short, while a seventh often votes with them, sometimes giving them a working majority. And the main organizer of the January 31 “Labor Against ICE” march was the DSA.
This background helps to explain why the several thousand marchers were unprepared for the feds’ attack. While the volume of gas grenades, pepper balls and other supposedly “less lethal” munitions exceeded anything recently experienced, everyone in Portland knows that federal agents have repeatedly fired tear gas at protests outside the ICE facility. Yet the DSA, as part of the Democratic Party of genocide, deportations and racist repression, looks to the bourgeois state apparatus as its “answer” to the capitalist assault on working and oppressed people. In addition to frog outfits, the city’s initial response to the feds’ invasion was to do what city councilors do best, fiddle with zoning regulations. To no avail.
The labor rally and march started from Elizabeth Caruthers Park, drawing a huge crowd which even the Portland Police Bureau said numbered “well into the thousands.” (Photo: Oregon Public Broadcasting)
And now, in response to the January 31 attack, what did the demonstration organizers do? A February 2 letter by DSA labor leader Jamie Partridge, a former officer of National Association of Letter Carriers Local 82, called on Mayor Keith Wilson to “enforce all violations of city code at the Macadam ICE facility” and “enforce the city’s provisions against prohibited nuisances.” Hello?! ICE is not a “nuisance” but dangerous commandos acting as Trump’s personal shock troops in the drive toward a Bonapartist police state. The “Peacock” strategy tries to make light of this deadly threat to immigrants and to the rights of working people generally, channeling the widespread anger at Trump and ICE into the dead-end of looking to the capitalist state.
The role of the DSA is to put a friendly face on the Democratic Party, which built up the whole deportation machinery that Trump is now using (including putting kids in cages). Counterposed to this is the program of Class Struggle Workers – Portland (CSWP), a tendency of labor militants which works fraternally with the Internationalist Group and which initiated the Portland Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants. The CSWP participated in the January 31 labor demonstration with its banner calling for “Full Citizenship Rights for Immigrants,” to “Break with the Democrats and Republicans” and “For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!”
Class Struggle Workers – Portland at the rally on January 31. Counterposed to the Democratic (Party) Sociliasts of America, who lead struggles back into the party of genocide and deportations, the CSWP calls to break with the Democrats, for a class struggle workers party and full citizenship rights to all immigrants. (Internationalist photo)
While denouncing the violent ICE attack on the demonstration, an article in the Northwest Labor Press (5 February) quotes organizers asking protesters just before the march began, “Will you stay peaceful while you are part of our march?” to which the crowd responded, “I will.” This account (which shows that the organizers were aware of potential problems) talks about “a group of individuals” who allegedly “crossed the [ICE] building’s property line and approached its security gate. At that point, agents marched out and began firing volleys of tear gas canisters and other projectiles into the crowd….” (Actually, the feds fired tear gas and flash-bangs from the roof of the ICE facility.) The Labor Press account implicitly blames “uncontrollable” elements for the ICE attack, echoing the liberals’ refrain from 2020, blaming police violence on the “black bloc” that supposedly provoked the cops.
… But Mobilize Labor’s Power to Stop Deportations and ICE Terror
The Northwest Labor Press article also says “no building trades or industrial unions were listed as endorsers,” saying “some members” believe that “taking a stand against immigration enforcement” would go against their “sole focus” on “wages, hours and working conditions.” Contrary to this liberal caricature of narrow, reactionary construction workers, in Portland the opposite is the case. Building trades unions including IUPAT (Painters) Local 10, Iron Workers Local 29, Carpenters Local 503, IATSE (Stage Hands) Local 28 and IBEW (Electrical Workers) Local 48, along with other unions, have passed resolutions calling to mobilize labor in defense of immigrants, and members are participating in the LCDI.
Signs from the Portland Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants contingent at the January 31 labor march. A sign lists several building trades unions that have passed resolutins calling to mobilize labor to stop deportations, and whose members are participating in the Portland LCDI. (Photo: Fox 12)
On January 31, the IBEW had a contingent of 40 union members. And in Trump’s first administration, on 4 June 2017, the CSWP initiated a “Portland Labor Against the Fascists” mobilization of 300 union members (many from those same unions) and other supporters against a fascist provocation. At Pride demonstrations in Portland, class-conscious construction workers have marched behind banners proclaiming “Hard Hats for Gay Rights” and “Defend Transgender People.” Painters Local 10, which has been in the forefront, has called to “Defend Immigrants – Break with the Democrats and Republicans – For a Class Struggle Workers Party.”
Internationalist Group signs at
the site of the tear-gas assault, featured on the Oregon
AFL-CIO Facebook page. (Photo: Oregon Labor Federation / Facebook)
Outrage over the obvious act of vengeance on the part of the feds in Portland on January 31, smarting over the union-initiated January 23 mass mobilization against ICE in Minneapolis, is totally justified. The issue is where that anger should be directed. Rather than tailoring the response to pressure Portland mayor Wilson, Multnomah County district attorney Nathan Vasquez and Oregon governor Tina Kotek and looking to the Peacocks of the Portland City Council; rather than begging the Democrats, who wax nostalgic about when “deporter-in-chief” Obama and Biden expelled millions without rocking the boat, the only way to stop the reign of terror unleashed on immigrants is for workers themselves to use their power to stop it.
As a sequel to January 31, on February 18, federal judge Michael Simon extended the TRO against using crowd control munitions outside the Portland ICE facility to March 3. On March 6, another federal judge issued a temporary injunction against using tear gas at the ICE outpost in the Gray’s Landing case. And on March 9, Judge Simon turned the TRO in the case brought by January 31 demonstrators into a preliminary injunction while their suit proceeds. The judge commented that the federal agents’ repeated use of pepper balls, pepper spray and tear gas against crowds of peaceful demonstrators “chill” their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Think an injunction will stop the feds? Don’t count on it.
Labor must use its own power to stop the racist ICE thugs. The thousands of union members and supporters who turned out on January 31 were inspired by the tens of thousands who turned out in Minneapolis the week before in a huge labor-initiated demonstration. Labor reformists seek to turn this into appeals to the courts and pressure on the capitalist politicians, but as the Portland LCDI wrote last November:
“[O]ne thing is certain: we can put no faith in the capitalist courts or politicians of either big-business party. Instead, Portland’s working class must bring out its own power — we need to use it now, or the hard-won rights of the whole working class will go down the drain. As federal agents seek to terrorize immigrants and the whole of the population, the Portland Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants calls on workers throughout the city to organize now for bringing out labor’s power to say All out for FEDS OUT!”