by Shaanth Nanguneri, Oregon Capital Chronicle
March 6, 2026
A federal judge on Friday barred federal agents outside Portland’s waterfront Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility from using tear gas and chemical munitions in a manner that could seep into a nearby affordable housing complex unless there is an “imminent threat to life.”
Residents and Reach Community Development, which operates the apartment complex Gray’s Landing, in December filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They sought a preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Amy M. Baggio that would bar federal agents from deploying tear gas and chemical munitions likely to infiltrate the complex unless necessary to protect against an “imminent and concrete threat” to the lives of law enforcement and the public.
Since last summer, the Portland ICE facility has been the site of largely peaceful protests by demonstrators advocating against the enforcement operations of federal immigration agents. Although protest activity died down afterward, it reignited in the fall after President Donald Trump’s attempted deployment of the National Guard to Portland and again after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January.
The federal government argued that it was deploying lawful crowd control measures against violent protesters, though it has only charged a fraction of the thousands of protesters at the site. Residents, however, disputed that framing at a Feb. 13 hearing and said they have had persistent exposure to munitions such as tear gas, pepper balls and smoke grenades.
They said this exposure traumatized them and induced wheezing, migraines and hives. Some reported sleeping in their bathtubs, needing to undergo surgery and putting on gas masks when they go to bed.
“These eight months of conduct, involving repeated, large-scale deployments of chemical munitions, impacting sizable areas away from the Portland ICE Facility, coordinated with large numbers of officers, seemingly contrary to warnings contained in the Use of Force manuals,” Baggio wrote in her ruling, referring to standards on using such munitions in guidance for federal agents.
She added: “And in the face of repeated notice of physical harm to the Portland ICE Facility neighbors, combine to form a robust record for this Court’s conclusion that Defendants had ‘extended opportunities to do better’ but instead displayed a ‘protracted failure even to care,’ thereby constituting deliberate indifference.”
Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. Lawyers for the plaintiffs alleged that the Trump administration deployed munitions to create propaganda for social media while they embedded conservative social media influencers within facility operations.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a D.C-based nonprofit legal group which assisted with providing counsel in the case, called the ruling a “powerful victory for people who have used their voices to fight back against unconstitutional government violence.”
“The court recognized that poisoning a residential community with toxic chemicals is a profound abuse of power,” Perryman said in a statement. “This decision protects basic health and safety and the right to live in one’s home without fear of chemical weapons being used by the government. Residents should not be harmed simply because they live next to a site of public protest.”
Baggio’s ruling is not the only limitation affecting the federal government at the ICE facility in Portland. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon is expected to rule by Monday in a similar case brought against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by a group of protesters and freelance journalists represented by the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU.
Simon has signaled he’ll rule in favor of the protesters and journalists and make permanent a temporary order he issued in early February barring federal agents at the Portland ICE facility from deploying less-lethal munitions and chemicals at protesters unless the agents are in “imminent threat of physical harm.”
In a short conclusion, Baggio said she had weighed the decision and issued it “carefully, narrowly, and with due regard to the competing interests between defendants’ need to do their jobs safely and the resident plaintiffs’ rights to the most fundamental aspects of liberty known since the early days of our democracy.”
Capital Chronicle reporter Alex Baumhardt contributed to this report.
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