Apparently the girl from that video is safe. She posted bail, though no one is really sure what she was arrested for, so they don't know why she was required to post bail. The guy from the Washington Post article was apparently questioned by police after being detained but released without charges when he refused to talk. Seems to be nothing more than direct intimidation. However, since everyone involved is anonymous, he's unable to do anything about it. Those are the only two cases I've followed up on, though. Those are also cases where real police were involved. In both cases, it seems the victims were simply walking home from peaceful protests, and it looks like neither has been charged with any crime.
Here is a pretty detailed write-up about it.
“I am basically tossed into the van,” Pettibone said. “And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see and they held my hands over my head.”
Pettibone and O’Shea both said they couldn’t think of anything they might have done to end up targeted by law enforcement. They attend protests regularly but they said they aren’t “instigators.” They don’t spray paint buildings, shine laser pointers at officers or do anything else other than attend protests, which law enforcement have regularly deemed “unlawful assemblies.”
Blinded by his hat, in an unmarked minivan full of armed people dressed in camouflage and body armor who hadn’t identified themselves, Pettibone said he was driven around downtown before being unloaded inside a building. He wouldn’t learn until after his release that he had been inside the federal courthouse.
“It was basically a process of facing many walls and corners as they patted me down and took my picture and rummaged through my belongings,” Pettibone said. “One of them said, ‘This is a whole lot of nothing.’”
Pettibone said he was put into a cell. Soon after, two officers came in to read him his Miranda rights. They didn’t tell him why he was being arrested. He said they asked him if he wanted to waive his rights and answer some questions, but Pettibone declined and said he wanted a lawyer. The interview was terminated, and about 90 minutes later he was released. He said he did not receive any paperwork, citation or record of his arrest.
“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone said. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”
According to the US Marshals Service, "All United States Marshals Service arrestees have public records of arrest documenting their charges. Our agency did not arrest or detain Mark James Pettibone.”
This article contains several videos of abductions in Ohio.
***
Here are some cited sources I've found on Reddit:
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum late Friday sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Marshals Service in federal court as part of an effort to obtain a court order that would prevent federal agents from arresting people in Portland. Demonstrations against systemic racism have continued nightly in Portland since police killed George Floyd on May 25. Videos from the protests have shown agents arresting protesters and putting them in unmarked SUVs. Rosenblaum is seeking a temporary restraining order to “immediately stop federal authorities from unlawfully detaining Oregonians.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/hua90r
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/hubvej
“You’ll see something rolled out this week, as we start to go in and make sure that the communities — whether it’s Chicago or Portland or Milwaukee or someplace across the heartland — we need to make sure their communities are safe,” he added ("he" being Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows)
.
All three cities named are run by Democrats.
President Donald Trump also indicated that federal squads would likely target cities run by the party that opposes him. He said on “Fox News Sunday” that “violence” was on the increase in “Democrat-run cities.”
“They are liberally run, they are stupidly run,” he added.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler told NPR Sunday that while the protest situation had been tense in his city, it was quieting — until the federal squads moved in and “blew the lid off the whole thing.”
He said city and state officials tried to reason with Wolf but were told to “stuff it.”
With the federal squads, “they won’t even identify who they are,” Wheeler said. “We don’t know why they’re here. We don’t know the circumstances under which they’re making arrests. We don’t know what their policies are or what accountability mechanisms” they follow, he added.
***
No one is totally sure who the agents are (including the mayors of the cities they are attacking), but the best guesses are a combination of Homeland Security and ICE, along with Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection’s BORTAC. However,
like this article mentions, anyone can buy this gear on eBay.
But the personnel in Portland had few identifiable patches or markings, which are normally worn by members of the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies. At least one officer had what appeared to be a nondescript Velcro patch on his left shoulder, standard for the military and some firearm enthusiasts, and a single "POLICE" patch on his tactical vest.
A variety of such patches are sold online, including ones marked "POLICE" and a near replica of the Department of Homeland Security's patch. Patches of law-enforcement agencies and specific military units are also available on the internet, often sold under the pretense of catering to enthusiasts and veterans.
The entire ensemble seen in the videos, down to the minivan, is readily available to consumers, making it exceedingly difficult to discern between a legitimate authority and a provocateur masquerading as one.
***
I know feathers get ruffled when you compare Trump to Hitler, but this isn't too far off from what the
Gestapo was doing:
Between June 1942 and March 1943, student protests were calling for an end to the Nazi regime. These included the non-violent resistance of Hans and Sophie Scholl, two leaders of the White Rose student group.[50] However, resistance groups and those who were in moral or political opposition to the Nazis were stalled by the fear of reprisals from the Gestapo. Fearful of an internal overthrow, the forces of the Gestapo were unleashed on the opposition. Groups like the White Rose and others, such as the Edelweiss Pirates, and the Swing Youth, were placed under strict Gestapo observation. Some participants were sent to concentration camps. Leading members of the most famous of these groups, the White Rose, were arrested by the police and turned over to the Gestapo. For several leaders their punishment was death.[51] During the first five months of 1943, the Gestapo arrested thousands suspected of resistance activities and carried out numerous executions. Student opposition leaders were executed in late February, and a major opposition organisation, the Oster Circle, was destroyed in April 1943.[52] Efforts to resist the Nazi regime amounted to very little and had only minor chances of success, particularly since the broad percentage of the German people did not support such actions.[53]
Right now it looks like they're only temporarily detaining people. However, they've already gassed and attacked peaceful protestors, and
we already have active concentration camps, so it's not difficult to see how far this can potentially go, now that they're officially onto the "anonymous agents pulling people into unmarked vans" phase.
From
this article:
"What's required is a little bit of demystification of it," says Waitman Wade Beorn, a Holocaust and genocide studies historian and a lecturer at the University of Virginia. "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz. Concentration camps in general have always been designed—at the most basic level—to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."
Not every concentration camp is a death camp—in fact, their primary purpose is rarely extermination, and never in the beginning. Often, much of the death and suffering is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions. So far, 24 people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, while six children have died in the care of other agencies since September.
As a reminder, by DHS's own assertion, these detainments are civil, not criminal, and are not meant to be punitive in the way of a prison. Many of these people have not even been accused of a crime.
