PORTLAND, Ore. — Multiple residents of an affordable housing complex in Portland, Oregon, have bought gas masks to wear in their own homes, to protect themselves from tear gas fired by federal agents outside the immigration building across the street. Others have taped their windows or stuffed wet towels under their doors, while children have sought security by sleeping in closets.
Some are now telling their stories to a federal judge Friday, as they testify in a lawsuit seeking to limit federal officers' use of tear gas during protests at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building following months of repeated exposure.
The property manager of the apartment building and several tenants filed the suit against the federal government in December, arguing that the use of chemical munitions has violated residents' rights to life, liberty and property by sickening them, contaminating their apartments and confining them inside. They have asked the court to limit federal agents' use of such munitions unless needed to respond to an imminent threat.
“They’re simply trying to live their lives in peace in their homes," Daniel Jacobson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said during the hearing. "Yet our federal government is knowingly putting them through hell, and for no good reason at all.”
The defendants, which include ICE and the Department of Homeland Security and their respective heads, say officers have deployed crowd-control devices in response to violent protests at the building, which has been the site of demonstrations for months.
”The conduct at issue, law enforcement’s use of crowd control tactics to disperse unlawful crowds, does not even come close to shocking the conscience," Samuel Holt, an attorney for the federal government, said during the hearing.
The case comes amid growing concern over federal officers using aggressive crowd-control tactics, as cities across the country have seen demonstrations against the immigration enforcement surge spearheaded by President Donald Trump's administration.
In testimony, tenants of the Gray's Landing apartment complex described experiencing difficulty breathing, coughing, dizziness and other symptoms following exposure to chemicals from tear gas, smoke grenades and pepper balls.
“I have a gas mask in my bedroom. I have one in my living room. And I have one in my backpack,” said a plaintiff using a pseudonym due to being a domestic violence survivor. “I’ve slept with it on.”
She described how the chemical munitions triggered her post-traumatic stress and entered into her apartment. ”I could feel it, I could see it, I could taste it, I could smell it,” she said of the gas.
Gas canisters have hit apartments and been found in the building's courtyard and parking garage, according to the complaint.
Another plaintiff, Susan Dooley, a 72-year-old Air Force veteran with diabetes and high blood pressure, was sent by a doctor to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with shortness of breath and mild heart failure, the complaint said. Whitfield Taylor, who has placed wet towels around his window air conditioning unit in a bid to block the gas from entering his home, had to take his two daughters, 7 and 9, to urgent care for respiratory symptoms. The girls sometimes sleep in his closet to feel safe, according to the complaint.
Of the affordable housing complex’s 237 residents, nearly a third are age 63 or older, according to court filings. Twenty percent of units are reserved for low-income veterans and 16% of tenants identify as disabled.
The plaintiffs filed an updated request for a preliminary injunction limiting federal officers' use of tear gas late last month, after agents launched gas at a crowd of demonstrators including young children that local officials described as peaceful.
“As this brief is being filed, tear gas is once again inside the homes of Plaintiffs and other residents of Gray’s Landing,” the filing says, adding that it was launched by officers “despite facing no violence or imminent threats at all.”
The government said in court filings that federal officers have at times used crowd control devices in response to crowds that are “violent, obstructive or trespassing" or do not comply with dispersal orders.
It has also pushed back against the claims of tenants' constitutional rights being violated, saying that under such an argument, “federal and state law enforcement officers would violate the Constitution whenever they deploy airborne crowd-control devices that inadvertently drift into someone's home or business, even if the use of such devices is otherwise entirely lawful.”
The hearing comes after a federal judge in a separate Oregon lawsuit temporarily restricted agents' use of tear gas during protests at the building. The temporary restraining order in that case, filed by the ACLU of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists, is set to expire next week.
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