ICE at Bay: Siege at Portland Continues as Copycat Insurrections Spread Nationwide

Thursday June 28 marks day 12 in the radical left wing and anarchist occupation and blockade of ICE headquarters in Portland, Oregon, organized by a group called Occupy ICE PDX. The direct action to shut down operations of the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement and investigative agency began with a small group of demonstrators on June 17. Within two days, scores of radicals, including families with children, had set up a sprawling tent city on the sidewalks and streets surrounding the building, effectively shutting it down. By week’s end, hundreds of “comrades” had been lured by social media to join the campaign, as it served to inspire similar provocative illegal actions around the country. According to Willamette Week, “The Portland occupation, the first nationwide, is an attempt to disrupt President Donald Trump's ‘zero tolerance’ policy that has treated refugees seeking asylum as criminals and separated small children from their parents.” National mainstream television and cable news coverage of these developments in Portland has continued to be largely nonexistent. The fact that the movement has gone nationwide has also been ignored. Several Internet political publications, including American Thinker on June 25, have reported on the story, as have a few major newspapers. In contrast, the radical ragtag “Occupy Movement” demonstrations in the fall of 2011 grabbed major media coverage including on TV from the outset of the first one, Occupy Wall Street. It’s plausible that the widespread coverage of obnoxious and potentially criminal actions that have been taken place, and their potential impact to harm Democrat candidates in the fall, have discouraged the MSM from reporting on the equally obnoxious radical encampments in Portland and other cities.