In the 1991 book Road Fever, about an expedition by road from the southern tip of South America to the northern reaches of Alaska, author Tim Cahill told of advice the two-man team got from a security consultant with deep law enforcement and military experience.
In parts of the trip, the travelers were told, safety would be uncertain at best, and roads patrolled not only by legitimate police and military forces but also by bandits and guerillas. The crew should always stop and comply for clearly official stations and their officers, they were told. In other cases, that might be a mistake because stopping for the bad guys could mean unfortunate results up to and including loss of their lives.
What to do if they encountered such a situation (which, ultimately, they didn’t)? Put on the gas, roar on through and outrun them, if they could. And if a vehicle was set up to block the roadway? They discussed various approaches to smashing their way through. Cahill remarked that during the discussion, “I found myself sinking deep into a kind of glowering paranoia.”
You needn’t travel to such exotic locations these days to start considering this kind of security calculus: The streets of Portland or Minneapolis, will do. And properly distinguishing between the different kinds of traffic-stoppers has become important locally.
After the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis, the double shooting by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents this week in Portland and numerous other incidents — such as the McMinnville teenager dragged from his vehicle through a smashed drivers’ window — anyone, immigrant or not, has to think carefully about interacting with this agency.
If you’re approached by local law enforcement or the state police, you know it. Their vehicles and persons are clearly marked, their faces and badges visible. But ICE officers, masked and obscured, could be just another street gang, and in too many cases that’s how they’ve behaved.
The story from the Department of Homeland Security was of encounters with terrorists and gang members. But there’s no indication that any of the three shooting victims were armed or fought back in any way. And the questions about the Portland incident are piling up rapidly.
DHS was specific about saying both Portland shooting victims were associated with the transnational (but Venezuela-based) Tren de Aragua gang. How would they have known this before even stopping the vehicle? Portland police said there is some “nexus” between the two and the gang, but it sounds vague so far. Researchers who have looked into the gang’s reach said they have found no significant evidence of it in Portland.
The two have been identified as Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, Venezuelan nationals. They were described as having criminal records. But research by the Oregon Capital Chronicle of federal and state court records, plus the massive Lexis-Nexis database, found no such cases.
One witness at the scene of the incident was said in news reports to have heard five shots. That was disputed by the Department of Homeland Security, which said just one was fired — which remarkably would have had to pass through a door and the driver before reaching the passenger. Or if, as DHS maintained, the truck was “weaponized,” that would have meant it was moving toward the shooter — who could not have hit both people from the front with a single shot.
Who was the border protection officer who shot an unarmed driver and passenger on the streets of Portland? We’ve not been told.
Multnomah County officials have said they plan to conduct a full investigation, and so has Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield.
They should get about it promptly, and they should not be deterred as pressure mounts (as it did in Minnesota) to turn over the investigation to federal officials. At this point, the results of a federal inquiry, if released at all, would be highly unlikely to be widely believed. State and local investigations are the only way most Oregonians, or anyone, will ever get a sense of what happened.
We need an independent and credible investigation, and soon, so we know what we’re dealing with when ICE comes to town. Is it in the category of a law enforcement agency, or something else?
These days, Oregon drivers are in the same position as Tim Cahill’s cross-continental travelers in trying to discern one from the other.
This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.