Officials in Seattle voice fears after more federal agents arrive in city
SEATTLE — More U.S. federal agents have been dispatched to Seattle to protect federal property amid lingering unrest in the city following the shutdown of a protest zone where demonstrators camped for weeks during Black Lives Matter protests.
The agents are with a special response team of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said she felt she was misled by Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, who, she said, told her that the U.S. government had no plans to send federal agents to Seattle.
“I don’t want to say I was lied to, but I think there was maybe semantics that weren’t forthcoming,” Durkan said Friday.
Durkan urged people to protest peacefully over the weekend at planned rallies that are likely to be large. She said she hoped to avoid what is happening in Portland, which has seen ongoing clashes between demonstrators and federal police.
“I cannot overstate it enough, what is happening is frightening to me,” Durkan said. “It is frightening that you would use federal agents for political purposes.”
The agents sent to Seattle are on standby to help other federal law-enforcement officials protect federal facilities in the city, according to two law-enforcement officials.
The agents arrived after businesses in Seattle were vandalized in the downtown area and in the nearby Capitol Hill neighbourhood. A small section of Capitol Hill was occupied last month by the protesters and turned into the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone.
Demonstrators took over the area measuring several blocks for about two weeks until authorities returned in force and cleared it out on July 1 after two fatal shootings.
King County executive Dow Constantine tweeted Thursday that a federal plane had landed at an airport in Seattle that evening and that “more than a dozen personnel drove off to an unknown destination.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has also announced that agents would be sent to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Constantine said people in the Seattle area reject “Trump’s unconstitutional use of federal force. It is a transparent attempt to intimidate. But we will not be intimidated.”
Brian T. Moran, the U.S. attorney for Western Washington, said the federal agents were there solely to protect federal properties, adding that the federal courthouse in downtown Seattle was broken into last weekend and damaged by a smoke bomb and graffiti. “These are the places where federal judges decide cases and controversies, including those filed by protesters against the city, where social security benefits are processed, citizenship is made possible, and where the rights of the accused are protected,” Moran said.