There's this video that came out of Portland the other night.

Just a 45-second snippet of the protests happening there.

I've been watching it again and again.

In it, you see these federal agents, the ones that have been dispatched to guard a courthouse downtown.

They surround a man, get him on the ground, force him to lie down.

And then, these clouds of tear gas roll in, obscuring the shot.

You can see legs, flashlights, people in uniform.

And then you hear the man scream.

To me, help, help!

I can't be here.

To me, this video, it's a crystallization

of the kinds of tactics the government's been using

in this second wave of violence

against Black Lives

Matter protesters. Overwhelming force, sure, but also obfuscation. The officers here,

reportedly from the Department of Homeland Security, are faceless, nameless, retreating and

reappearing inside a kind of mist. Yeah, I mean, there's very little, nameless, retreating and reappearing, inside a kind of mist.

Yeah, I mean, there's very little, on a good day, DHS operates with very little transparency.

Jonathan Blitzer covers Homeland Security for the New Yorker.

He's seen officers like this working along the border, but not in urban centers.

Over the years, he's gotten used to thinking of the Department of Homeland Security

as an agency that operates under a shadow.

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