Federal officers barred from unleashing indiscriminate force on ICE protesters in Portland
Updated: Mar. 10, 2026, 10:49 a.m.|Published: Mar. 09, 2026, 5:32 p.m.
Jack Dickinson, one of the plaintiffs, has regularly worn a fleece chicken suit to the protests and has been struck in the back by pepper balls, he testified. Here, he's looking at armed federal officers on the second-floor roof of Portland's ICE building , on Sun., Oct. 26, 2025.Dave Killen / Special to The Oregonian
By Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive
A federal judge on Monday granted an injunction barring federal officers from using force indiscriminately against peaceful protesters at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland.
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon found that lawyers for three protesters and two freelance journalists had shown officers under the unified command of the Federal Protective Service have directed excessive force against nonviolent protesters at the building to chill their First Amendment rights to free speech and free press.
He ordered that no federal officer may direct or use chemical or projectile munitions outside the ICE building unless a specific target poses an “imminent threat of physical harm” to an officer or other person.
No officer may fire munitions at the head, neck or torso of any person unless the officer is legally justified in using deadly force, the judge said.
Simon also said no officer may use pepper spray or another aerosol spray against someone unless that person exhibits “active resistance.”
That means an individual must be engaged in violent, unlawful conduct or that an officer determines the spray is ”reasonably necessary in a defensive capacity,” the ruling said. That doesn’t mean simply trespassing, refusing to move or disperse or going “limp,” all examples of passive resistance, Simon found.
He also directed the parties in the case to discuss how federal officers at the ICE building can place “conspicuous and unique” identifying numbers or letters on their uniforms, helmets or vests so they can be easily identified from a reasonable distance.
The judge asked them to submit a proposed agreement in writing within 21 days. If they can’t agree, he asked each side to submit their own proposals.
Simon’s order encompasses the area at and around the ICE building at South Macadam Avenue and Bancroft Street.
His preliminary injunction marks the second one issued in federal court in Portland in three days aimed at curbing munitions deployed at the building.
In his ruling, Simon quoted Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the U.S. who wrote in 1737: “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
READ SIMON’s RULINGS:
-Preliminary injunction
-Use of force restrictions
-Grants provisional class certification
Videotaped depositions from Federal Protective Service officers who testified in the case showed they were inadequately trained and did not understand their agency’s own public order policy, Simon found. No officer has yet been reprimanded or received any corrective action after violating their own use-of-force policy at the ICE building, he noted.
Simon said while investigations continue on four uses of force by federal officers since last June, the reviews haven’t followed agency protocol. They were opened only after public complaints.
“Ample evidence shows the existence of an unwritten policy” to encourage excessive, unpredictable and indiscriminate force to quash protesters’ rights, the judge ruled.
Rather than reprimanding federal officers for violence against protesters, “senior officials have publicly condoned it,” he found.
“Several protesters and press have described being directly targeted with force in the head and other areas of the body without warning and despite posing no threat nor creating a driveway obstruction,” Simon wrote. “Other protesters and press describe being targeted in a variety of ways, including being shot while standing apart from others, being attacked after verbally engaging with officers, or having their cameras or recording equipment hit directly by officers.”
Simon also granted early class certification, appointing the five named plaintiffs to represent a broader group of all people who “have, desire to, or will nonviolently protest against or report on DHS (Department of Homeland Security) activities at the Portland ICE Building.”
The plaintiffs in the case include Jack Dickinson, aka the “Portland Chicken,” a 27-year-old local man who has worn a fleece chicken suit to protest more than 150 times at the building since last April. He said he chose the costume as a reference to a nickname for President Donald Trump — TACO for “Trump Always Chickens Out” — that emerged during demonstrations against the president’s tariff policies last spring.
Dickinson estimated he’s spent 50 to 60 hours a week attending and organizing demonstrations at the ICE building since April to protest the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign. Though the Oregon State University graduate and math major also has a master’s degree in economics, he testified that he’s not working and grateful that he has the financial support of his parents.
Laurie Eckman, 84, was struck in the head with a pepper ball round on Oct. 4, 2025, when she joined a march to the federal immigration enforcement building in Portland. "It was just unthinkable that this could be happening," she testified in federal court Monday.Gosia Wozniacka / The Oregonian
Also among the plaintiffs are Portland couple Laurie Eckman and her husband Richard Eckman, who are both 84 and live two blocks from the ICE building. Laurie Eckman was struck in the head with a pepper ball on Oct. 4 and her husband, who uses a walker, was helped out of the street as federal officers fired tear gas near him. The couple had joined a rally at Elizabeth Caruthers Park at the last minute that day and then marched with a peaceful group to the ICE building.
The other plaintiffs are videographers Hugo Rios and Mason Lake, who each testified they’ve been struck by pepper bullets while filming the protests.
Simon’s ruling followed a three-day hearing last week in which each of the plaintiffs testified about federal officers firing pepper balls, tear gas, flash-bang and smoke grenades toward them.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon who represent them played videos of federal officers’ clashes with their clients.
One showed officers dousing protesters in the face with pepper spray as they participated in a Jan. 19 sit-in along the sides of the ICE building’s driveway and another captured an officer lobbing multiple smoke and tear gas canisters over other officers into large crowds in the public street in front of the ICE building.
Simon cited findings by Portland police Cmdr. Franz Schoening, who testified that he was “startled” by some of the federal officers’ sudden use of tear gas on large, peaceful crowds, and by Gil Kerlikowske, a former U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner who identified “a myriad of misuses of crowd control munitions” at the ICE field office.
The Federal Protective Service’s public order policy restricts using aerosol chemical sprays against passive protesters, yet the ACLU lawyers showed videotaped sworn depositions from two of the agency supervisors and a handful of agency officers who were unfamiliar with the policy, including one who had never seen it in writing.
Simon’s ruling came three days after Oregon’s U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio separately issued a preliminary injunction that restricts federal officers at the ICE building from using tear gas and other chemical munitions that are likely to seep into nearby Gray’s Landing, a 209-unit low-income housing complex across the street, unless the officers or others face an imminent threat of death.
The residents argued that a separate injunction was warranted, despite the ongoing litigation in the case before Simon, saying they’ve suffered unique harms and needed special relief to protect their right to be free from bodily harm.
In the case before Simon, U.S. Justice Department lawyer Brad Rosenberg argued that the Department of Homeland Security has a policy that prohibits retaliatory use of force. He said the federal officers have used force to remove trespassers from blocking the ICE office driveway and prevent damage to the building.
Rosenberg also blamed the city and state’s sanctuary laws, arguing they have prohibited Portland and state police from clearing protesters out of the street in front of the building because the federal vehicles coming and going may be involved in immigration.
Rosenberg called the local police actions “discriminatory,” saying the city government “should not be picking and choosing which vehicles should access those streets in order to access their own buildings. That‘s part of what’s created the problem.”
In response to the injunction, a Homeland Security department spokesperson said by email that the First Amendment protects speech and “peaceful assembly - not rioting.”
The department “is authorized to do what is appropriate and necessary in each situation to diffuse violence against our officers in the most appropriate manner possible,” the email said.
