Protester Encampment at Portland ICE Facility Dismantled

A long-running encampment outside of an Immigration Customs and Enforcement facility in Portland has been taken down by police and a man was arrested after a journalist was assaulted near the facility. Entity correspondent Jason Blair is in Portland now. Good evening Jason. What is the current situation after the encampment got taken down? >> Hey Tiffany. Yeah. So, this has been a longunning encampment in some form or another for about four or five months now, right across the street from the ICE facility in Portland, Oregon. And the police did come by last night to make them take it down. And here I do have a clip actually of what the current state of the encampment is just moments ago when I took it. You can see that there's a small canopy back up already and some a lot of the stuff is still uh strung out on the sidewalk. However, I do have footage of it from last night. As you can see, um when they were taking it down, when the police arrived, there were a lot of tents up and like I said, this had been going on uh for about four or five months. And the main reason the police wanted to take it down is they need to keep the sidewalk open so people can use it. And a police sergeant said last night that they are going to be coming into the area more often to get more strict with enforcing laws in this area. um for quote the next couple of days and this includes cracking down on public drinking, disorderly conduct and jaywalking. And he said if someone is blocking traffic that uh it will be disorderly conduct in the second degree and someone can actually go to jail for that which blocking traffic has been an ongoing issue with the facility. Cars are constantly driving in and people are spilling over in the sidewalk and I think this encampment was contributing to that quite a bit. Um, the encampment was also kind of a source of lots of uh uh fights. Sometimes people, especially when some of the proise supporters would try to walk through that area, there would often be a confrontation leading to sometimes a physical altercation with injuries. Back to you. >> And Jason, I understand that an arrest was made after a journalist was assaulted. What can you tell us about that? Yeah, Tiffany. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not too uncommon. Uh, a journalist named Cam Higgby was said that he was assaulted and also his phone was stolen and smashed while he was filming in the area. He's often uh at the ICE facility filming and and reporting on the situation. He says that he regularly gets death threats when he's out doing this. And this isn't the first time that he's been attacked, but a gentleman was arrested uh related to this assault and he was taken into custody by the Portland police. And just to give you another example of kind of the things that have happened here, another journalist said that just the other day she was eating in a restaurant uh with some of her uh with some of her friends and one of the protesters regularly on at the ice facility recognized them and started live streaming them by sat next to them at the table started live streaming their private conversation. Eventually, this person was asked to leave the hotel, but this is just some of the interesting things that have gone on in the area involving journalists. Uh, back to you. All right, Jason, thanks for that and stay safe out