July 21, 2020 1:03PM # The People of Portland: DHS’s Involuntary Human Test Subjects By [Patrick G. Eddington](https://www.cato.org/people/patrick-g-eddington) --- SHARE The people of Portland are now experiencing what many people of color–particularly Latinos living on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border–have experienced for decades: out of control DHS agents violating their constitutional rights with apparent impunity. A few years back, I launched [*Checkpoint America: Monitoring The Constitution‐​Free Zone*](https://www.cato.org/checkpoint-america), which examined Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoints located inside this country–checkpoints which are frequently used to detain, question and sometimes inflict violence on motorists who refuse to answer whether or not they are U.S. citizens. Since the Supreme Court misguidedly blessed the use of such checkpoints by CBP in the infamous 1976 [*U.S. v Martinez-Fuerte*](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/428/543.html) decision, Congress has taken no action to put real limits on what CBP can and cannot do to people at those checkpoints, despite multiple General Accounting Office reports ([2009](https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-824) and [2017](https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-50)) showing how useless they are, and how they have morphed into generalized crime control checkpoints–something expressly forbidden in the *Martinez-Fuerte* decision. The lack of oversight and restraints on CBP has created a culture of impunity. The same has been true of its counterpart DHS agency, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ([ICE](https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/ice-records-confirm-that-immigration-enforcement-agencies-are-using-invasive-cell-phone-surveillance-devices/)) for decades. The bitter fruits of the lack of oversight and accountability for those DHS components is now on full display in Portland. The de facto kidnapping by DHS agents of [Mark Pettibone](https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/) on July 15 should have resulted in the immediate suspension of the agents and a civil rights violation investigation by the Department of Justice. But it is the Department of Justice, in coordination with DHS, that is facilitating these kinds of rights violations. On May 31, the Justice Department [authorized](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-floyd-police-brutality-protests-government) the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to conduct covert surveillance and related activities against Black Lives Matter protestors in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. And following President Trump’s issuance of a “monument protection” [executive order](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-american-monuments-memorials-statues-combating-recent-criminal-violence/) on June 26, DHS on July 1 circulated [press guidance](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/border-patrol-portland-arrest/) to its components about how to field inquiries from reporters about pending deployments of DHS law enforcement personnel assigned to its “Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT)” for “potential surge activity to ensure the continuing protection of people and property.” This isn’t about protecting monuments. It’s about using the people of Portland as involuntary human test subjects for political repression operations carried out *under the guise* of protecting federal property–operations that DHS, with legal cover and possibly intelligence assistance from DoJ, intends to [export to other cities](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/20/homeland-security-planning-to-deploy-150-agents-to-chicago-this-week/#65a5ea894146) beginning this week. ##### Related Tags [Free Speech and Civil Liberties](https://www.cato.org/free-speech-civil-liberties), [Criminal Justice](https://www.cato.org/criminal-justice), [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).