In Portland, mob attacks the local ICE office, while the mayor orders police to do nothing about it

In any other era, Ted Wheeler would be a household name – and not in a good way – for what he did late last week. The Portland mayor, a Democrat (of course), order local police to stand by and do nothing as the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office was getting besieged by a mob. This even as ICE officials were calling Portland police asking for help.

Nope. Portland police would not help. The mayor had ordered it. Because ICE is “on the wrong track” in terms of policy, and as far as Wheeler is concerned, that means they deserved whatever they got, even if that included criminal behavior at the hands of an angry mob.

It’s hard to believe this happened. It’s even harder to believer you’re not hearing much about it, because in America circa 2018, the media no longer thinks it’s remarkable when a local mayor orders police not to protect innocent people for purely political reasons:

Where were the police? Ordered away by Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, who doubles as police commissioner. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” he tweeted. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place.”

The mob set up camp behind the building, where they harassed journalists and banned photography. The open-borders advocates also erected an 8-foot wall around their site. I walked through and saw young children, including infants, in squalid conditions and 90-degree heat. Every American flag was defaced. Anarchist and communist flags were unsoiled.

Stuart Lindquist, the ICE facility’s 79-year-old landlord, visited his property on June 21. “The political powers in the city of Portland have stopped the police from doing what they normally would do,” he told me. When he attempted to drive into the parking lot, occupiers swarmed and pounded his windows. In the commotion, Mr. Lindquist’s car struck someone in the mob, who wasn’t injured. His home address later appeared online, and he says the harassment hasn’t stopped.

On June 28 federal police mobilized from out of state finally moved to reopen the office. They arrested a handful of people for refusing to leave the ICE office’s front, but the rest retreated to the camp and focused their vitriol on the officers. They repeatedly called a black officer “traitor” and “house n—.” They shouted that they knew where the officers lived, and published more addresses online.

The same day Mayor Wheeler again pledged not to intervene. In a statement, he whitewashed the lawless behavior: “I join those outraged by ICE actions separating parents from their children, and support peaceful protest to give voice to our collective moral conscience.”

This is simply astonishing. It’s hard to say which is worse: Oakland Mayor Libby Maynard warning illegal aliens of an impending ICE raid, or Wheeler ordering local police not to help ICE officials operating in Portland when they were threatened by criminal behavior.

I don’t think it’s fair to say all on the left have lost their minds, but clearly there are some on the left – and sadly this includes a fair number of public officials – who are so taken with their hatred of the Trump Administration that they can’t even be bothered to perform the basic functions of law enforcement that are staples of their jobs.

These mobs are not after justice or anything else worthwhile. They’re just looking to cause mayhem and Mayor Wheeler is on their side. Apparently so are many other liberals if the mayhem creates a problem for the Trump Administration. That is now more important than maintaining law and order or protecting innocent people.

This post was originally published at Canada Free Press and is reposted here under a CreativeCommons, Non-Commericial 3.0 license.