Fascist police tactics

This is the text of a letter I sent to the Everett Herald, a local newspaper in my area:

The Trump administration is using fascist police tactics in Portland. Federal officers with no identification and using unmarked vehicles are arresting people on the streets of Portland without probable cause to believe that those people have committed any crime. They are using violence against peaceful demonstrators. Neither the City of Portland nor the State of Oregon has asked them to be there and both have in fact told them to leave. The State of Oregon has brought suit against the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to force them out. At first these unidentified federal troops may have been called in to protect federal property, but that is not what they are doing now. I never thought I would see federal officers acting like Mussolini’s black shirts or Hitler’s brown shirts, but that’s what these armed but unidentified men are doing. Every last American should be as angry about what is happening as they can be. We should all be afraid of the Trump administration turning America into a fascist state. We can vote Trump out of office in November. If we don’t I hate to think what my country will look like four years later. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be America.

Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson