Ambulance Crew: Federal Agents Delayed, Threatened Us

A report from the Willamette Week out of Oregon illustrates just how tense things got at immigration protests in Portland earlier this month. An ambulance crew says federal officers delayed them from taking a patient to the hospital—and that one officer threatened to shoot them, according to internal reports and emergency dispatch records obtained by the newspaper.

• The incident happened at Portland's ICE facility on October 5, when the ambulance responded to a call of a protester with a broken collarbone. The dispute reportedly began when the two-person crew, citing policy, forbade an agent from riding to the hospital with the patient.
• When agents then stood in front of the ambulance to block it from leaving, the driver says he put the vehicle in park, which caused it to lurch forward a bit. As a result, an angry agent accused the driver of trying to hit him and threatened to arrest and shoot the driver, per the report.

• "I was still in such shock that they were not only accusing me of such a thing, but crowding and cornering me in the seat, pointing and screaming at me, threatening to shoot and arrest me, and not allowing the ambulance to leave the scene," the driver wrote. "(W)e were essentially trapped."
• The written reports, consistent with publicly archived audio from the scene, were submitted after the incident to the ambulance company and union officials.
• The patient was eventually transported after agents agreed to follow in a separate vehicle. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to questions about the incident. The ambulance company said it is conducting a review, while the workers' union stated that armed interference with medical care crosses "a moral line."
• Read the full story.