Subject: Re: War ravaged Portland
I realize it's Portland and all, which has been a dump for the 25 years I've lived in the Pacific Northwest but even they must have things called...traffic cones...that would provide a simple barrier allowing the ICE vehicles to ingress and egress the area. And then be able to put folks on that line and tell goons not to cross it.

If there's openings to allow ICE vehicles (and pedestrians who need to use the front entrance) to go in and out, then what good is the barrier? People will just walk around the barrier through the openings. If you've got "folks on the line" to tell protesters not to cross the line, then what's the barrier for? This isn't a sprawling complex - it's an office building, with only about 50 feet of frontage on the side where the protestors are taking place, half of which is the driveway.

We can't enforce the law and protect federal officers who are merely executing the law because we might make some other angry bunch show up and *really* trash the place.

You can absolutely enforce the law to protect federal officers. If these protestors start committing actual crimes - arrest them! That's what the police have been doing. ICE can do it also!

But sweeping through and arresting people who haven't been committing crimes - arresting them just for protesting - is going to be counterproductive, expensive (it costs money to process all those folks), and not solve the problem. Because it's just going to 10x the number of people protesting, which is what you wanted to solve for.

Which is why the police aren't doing that, and why there's zero reason for the federal government to send troops to Portland. Because it isn't "war ravaged," as you have acknowledged. It just has had a relatively small (20-30 people) group of disruptive protestors causing problems for ICE. If there was a way for the police or federal troops to make the protest go away, there might be a realistic argument about whether that is an appropriate choice to make. But there isn't a way for anyone to make the protest go away, because if you try to suppress the protest you just get more protest.