A 19-year-old woman with no weapons pepper-sprayed in the face. An elderly couple shoved to the ground. A canister of tear gas tossed into a crowd without warning.

The scenes from protest activity outside a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facilities in south Portland have led Portland’s city attorney and the city’s police bureau to allege federal agents used excessive force — using force in ways Portland Police aren’t allowed to under both a 2014 settlement in a federal civil rights case and a spate of recent state laws passed after the 2020 racial justice protests.

But a late 19th-century constitutional interpretation giving federal agents broad authority has left the Portland Police Bureau and local district attorney saying they are effectively unable to e

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