SALEM, Ore. (AP) – U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials in the Trump administration compiled extensive intelligence dossiers on people who were arrested, even for minor offenses, during Black Lives Matter protests in Oregon.
Initial drafts of the dossiers even included friends of the subjects as well as their interests, but those were later removed and replaced with a note that they would be made available upon request, according to an internal review by the Department of Homeland Security.
The dossiers, known by agents as baseball cards, were previously normally compiled on non-U.S. citizens or only on Americans with “a demonstrated terrorism nexus,” according to the 76-page report. It was previously released last year but contains new revelations based on extensive redactions that were removed by the Biden administration.
Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s free speech, privacy and technology project, said the report indicates leaders of the Department of Homeland Security wanted to inflate the risk caused by protesters in Portland. The city became an epicenter of sometimes violent demonstrations in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer. But many protesters, including women belonging to a “Wall of Moms” ad hoc group and military veterans, were peaceful.
“We have a dark history of intelligence agencies collecting dossiers on protesters,” Wizner said over the phone from New York, referring to domestic spying in the 1960s and 1970s against civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters and others.
“We need to be especially careful if agencies that are tasked with intelligence gathering are going to step in to look at protest activity and where Americans are exercising their First Amendment rights,” Wizner said.
Protesters who break the law aren’t immune from being investigated, Wizner said, but intelligence agencies should be careful not to create “a chilling environment” for Americans to legally exercise their right to dissent.
The report reveals actions carried out by the DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis in June and July 2020, when militarized federal agents were deployed to Portland.
When the dossiers, officially known as Operational Background Reports, were being compiled, some DHS analysts voiced concerns over the legality of collecting intelligence “on protestors arrested for trivial criminal infractions having little to no connection to domestic terrorism,” the report said. Some of the employees even refused to participate.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, obtained the report with most redactions removed and provided it to reporters. Wyden, a member of the Senate select committee on intelligence, criticized DHS leaders in the Trump administration for actions revealed in the document.
“Political DHS officials spied on Oregonians for exercising their First Amendment right to protest and justified it with baseless conspiracy theories,” Wyden said.