Portland ICE Protesters and National Lawyers Guild

Want ICE out of Oregon
Represented by National Lawyers Guild


This article first appeared in New English Review.

Note the green cap.


The open borders crowd has been camping out in front of ICE hqs in Portland, Oregon for over a week, and now, after four days of warnings, police have moved them.

I take note that the protesters say they are represented by the National Lawyers Guild. I have written about the NLG several times in the past. Their Los Angeles, director, Jim Lafferty, has spoken twice at UC Irvine on behalf of the Muslim Student Union and against Israel. As I have often pointed out, the NLG was founded in the 1930s as a legal arm of the Communist Party USA. Today, they still exist and stand ready to jump on any band wagon that is designed to make America look bad. Lafferty was the chief organizer of the Occupy LA camp out in front of City Hall a few years ago before the Occupy Movement morphed into Antifa.

In fact, if you watch the video included in the above news link, near the end (1:14) you can see someone in a bright lime-green baseball cap. I have seen that cap before at UC Irvine. For a couple of years now, the NGL chapter attached to the UC Irvine Law School has accompanied Students for Justice in Palestine as their "official legal observers" as SJP and their leftist allies disrupt Israeli events and as SJP and the Muslim Student Union hold their annual May bash Israel events. The NLG people wear those distinctive caps that read, "legal observer-National Lawyers Guild". In May 2016, they accompanied SJP et al when they marched from the Cross Cultural Center (de facto clubhouse of the MSU) and as the protesters were literally trying to crash through the door, they (NLG) reportedly demanded that the protesters be allowed in. I was not present that time, but I was present the following May when they disrupted a panel discussion by Israeli military veterans. In fact, I videotaped it and you can see a young woman in the green cap who was also recording on her cell phone. You can see them in action in 2017 at UCI  here and here.

I wrote to the UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman and then law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky asking how people affiliated with their law school can disrupt events held by other students. Of course, I have never received a reply. Chemerinsky has moved on to the UC Berkeley Law School. Just yesterday, he wrote an op-ed in the LA Times complaining about the Supreme Court's "hypocritical" ruling on Trump's travel ban.

But here's a tip: If you ever encounter one of those Antifa mobs or a group trying to shut down an ICE facility or disrupt a campus event held by pro-Israel students, look for those people in the bright lime-green caps. Nat would be the National Lawyers Guild in action.