Demonstrators, federal agents clash outside Eugene Federal Building

9:45 p.m.:This story was updated to include an interview with Anna Lardner, one of the first people detained by agents early Tuesday afternoon.

7:15 p.m. update: Clashes between demonstrators and federal agents continued into Tuesday evening at the downtown federal building.

More than an hour after the end of a somber vigil to honor Alex Pretti, the intensive care unit nurse killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, some 200 protesters at Eugene’s federal building downtown continued with loud chants. At least two dozen uniformed officers approached them in what appeared to be a show of force.

Officers deployed gas canisters and, a few minutes after 7 p.m., a loud noisemaker, apparent efforts to disperse the crowd.

A voice over a loudspeaker at about 6:15 p.m. had warned those gathered of possible arrests, but the crowd appeared to pay no mind. Some protesters walked up to the locked federal building, with a few banging on the doors.

Some in the crowd chanted: “You can’t shoot us all.”

Uniformed officers were briefly seen on the roof of the building. As of about 6:45 p.m., officers appeared to be staying inside the building, but more than 30 agents appeared outside around 7 p.m.

2:45 p.m. update: Uniformed federal officers took multiple people into custody at least briefly during planned protests Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 27, at the federal building in downtown Eugene.

Officers in camouflage uniforms pinned one man against street pavement at about 2:45 p.m. as a crowd of some 40 people spilled onto Pearl Street, briefly affecting traffic. A gas irritant of some sort was used on a few protesters, apparently by the uniformed officers, as the officers retreated to the interior of the plaza.

The camouflage uniforms identified the agents as being from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Other agents wore black uniforms that said Department of Homeland Security.

Tuesday’s sporadic violence came after the Saturday, Jan. 24, death of the 37-year-old Pretti, who was shot by a Customs and Border Protection officer. It was the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal agents in Minneapolis this month.

In Eugene, weekly protests at the federal building have become more frequent, nearly daily, demonstrations. The federal building houses a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in addition to other federal government agencies.

A protest in September also involved federal officers deploying tear gas and detaining multiple people, but in recent days, while there have been some tensions, little or no violence had been reported.

Earlier in the day, eyewitnesses described the first altercation beginning shortly before 1 p.m. between federal officers and people attending an event that began with singing and chanting.

But video from the event shows that as officers in uniform lined up in what appeared to be a show of force, a few demonstrators approached officers who then used force to push some away.

Anna Lardner said she arrived to the federal building at about 12:15 p.m., but after a few minutes noticed officers “getting helmets on in the lobby.”

“I was over by the sing, in kind of the courtyard area. And then all of them came out. Over a dozen of them,” Lardner said, referring to a recurring demonstration called Singing for Our Lives.

Lardner, along with another activist, has a pending lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of federal regulations prohibiting “unusual noise” at federal facilities.

The lawsuit contends the rules violate free speech protections, and also that Lardner and co-plaintiff Chloe Longworth, during earlier protests at the federal building, “appear to have been targeted by [the Department of Homeland Security] because of their speech and because of their appearance of being leaders” at protest events.

Lardner said Federal Protective Service officers Tuesday pointed at her before detaining her in what she called a “retaliatory arrest.”

“They grabbed my arm and shoulders at first, and got me in handcuffs, really painfully, in handcuffs. And then I fell down, and they dragged me inside,” Lardner said.

A division of the federal Department of Homeland Security, Federal Protective Service is in charge of security at federal buildings.

Lardner said officers told her she had been detained on three charges, including interfering or disrupting a federal officer, violating an order and trespassing, which she disputed.

“I think that [Department of Homeland Security] is doing this to try to bully and intimidate other protesters, so they see what happens when people come here and they don’t like them, and DHS wants to scare those people so they don’t come back,” Lardner said hours after being released from detention. 

Lardner’s co-plaintiff, Longworth, as well as other demonstrators Jacob Griffin, Christine Patterson and Terry Morton also shared their accounts with Lookout Eugene-Springfield reporters.

They said two groups of demonstrators were gathered outside the building when between five and 10 agents wearing black emerged in a line with tactical gear, including nonlethal weapons.

One of the groups was Singing for Our Lives, a weekly Tuesday gathering from noon to 1 p.m. at the federal building organized by the BeLonging Space and Interfaith Alliance with Migrants.

At least two demonstrators approached the agents, and Longworth was pepper-sprayed, she said.

“I got sprayed right in the left eye with pepper spray. And after that, I don’t know what happened,” she said.

Later in the day, Longworth returned to the federal building and was detained by federal agents and issued a citation.

“I walked up to the plaza to see what was happening,” she said. “Like I just got there, folks started coming out. They immediately grabbed me.”

She said she was taken inside, and “processed” and issued a citation for failure to comply with a lawful order.

Griffin said the people detained and pepper sprayed were “clearly targeted.”

“They’re often a thorn in their side, and I think it was a stupid choice by ICE to escalate today,” said Griffin, holding a megaphone and at times yelling into it for the federal agents to let detainees go.

Griffin, a Eugene resident and organizer with the Trans Alliance of Lane County, said the group sympathizes with other vulnerable people who are targeted by the federal administration. 

“We see the connection between the danger we’re in and what’s happening to immigrants,” he said. “This administration clearly hates trans people, and we need to stop them right here, right now. What they’re doing to immigrants is unholy, it’s unjust and it needs to be stopped. We’re a vulnerable population, and we want to stand with other vulnerable populations.”

Morton and Patterson both said they saw Longworth and another person pepper-sprayed.

Agents pushed the other person to the ground, they said. That person was then detained, they said. A second person was also possibly detained at that time, according to witnesses.

Morton, who was also at the Singing for Our Lives demonstration at the corner of Pearl Street and Seventh Avenue, said the group gathers there every month and the gatherings always have been peaceful.

At least two people in camouflage attire were spotted on the roof of the federal building after the 1 p.m. incident.

The building was locked and inaccessible to the public. In the parking lot near the building on Pearl Street, six marked Department of Homeland Security vehicles were parked and 10 or so people wearing black were observed.

A retired woman, who declined to give her name to Lookout but who said she was a Eugene resident affiliated with the Indivisible activist group, said in an interview at about 3 p.m. that she sprayed her personal pepper spray in the direction of someone she described as an “agent” near the gate by the building’s entrance on Pearl Street. 

She said she couldn’t tell if the spray made contact with the person, but within 30 seconds of her deploying the spray, she said she was struck in the upper arm and back by a pepper ball. As soon as she was hit, she said she turned around and distanced herself from the scene. The woman said she didn’t feel she was in danger before deploying her spray.

“I was just pissed off and angry they had already taken somebody earlier,” she told Lookout. 

The woman said she regularly protests at the federal building and had been there on Tuesday since noon. She said she always carries pepper spray with her.

A spokesperson for the Eugene Police Department said about 1:30 p.m. the department would not be making any comment on the altercation because it does not involve EPD. Three calls made to Eugene’s ICE office did not go through, and an email to the general ICE email was not immediately returned.

Lookout Eugene-Springfield reporters Jaime Adame, Annie Aguiar, Ashli Blow, Ben Botkin, Taylor Goebel, Lilly St. Angelo, Michael Zhang and Grace Chinowsky contributed to this report.