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From the newsroom of the Washington Post.

Washington Post is Kolby.

Yes.

Hi, Stephanie McCrement from the Washington Post.

This is Post Reports. I'm Martin Powers.

It's Thursday, July 23rd.

Today, federal law enforcement in American cities, the downsides of COVID for Kenya's wildlife and the return of baseball.

So we first saw a very heavy militarized response to civil unrest here in D.C., including involving the National Guard and every federal law enforcement agency.

Now, with similar unrest in Portland, we're seeing the Department of Homeland Security deploy a very heavy response and response to violence outside a courthouse there.

I'm Matt Zavatowski. I'm a National Security reporter here at the Post.

Thank you.

I think that there are a lot of questions about the tactics that federal officers are using during these protests.

But there are also questions about just like who are these people and why are they the ones who are responding to this?

Yeah. So most of these people are with the Department of Homeland Security. That's an agency. It is a federal law enforcement agency kind of formed in the wake of 9-11.

Really, I think the primary motive for forming it was terrorism, right? And the fact that there was a terrorist attack that the U.S. failed to prevent.

And I think that's what confuses me is that when I think of DHS, I think of either counterterrorism or immigration enforcement, border control stuff like that, like not people who are supposed to be cracking down on protesters in the middle of cities.

Yeah, that is the right way to think about it. That's what DHS does. They also have the Secret Service, which protects the president and does some cyber crime investigation. They do the border protection, as you mentioned.

They do have a component called the Federal Protective Service that protects courthouses. So that arguably is kind of in the heartland of their mission.

But in addition to some of those components, you've seen these Bore-Tak teams, which is almost like the way to think about it is the SWAT of DHS. They typically respond to like narco terrorism type stuff being deployed on the streets of Portland.

So this is definitely outside what people normally conceive of as the Department of Homeland Securities mission.

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