US border agent shoots and wounds two people in Portland

A U.S. immigration agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland, Oregon, authorities said on Thursday, leading city and state officials to call for calm given public outrage over the ICE shooting death of a Minnesota woman a day earlier.

“We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more,” Portland police chief Bob Day said in a statement.

The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as U.S. Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

The statement said the driver, a suspected Venezuelan gang member, attempted to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over the agents. In response, DHS said, “an agent fired a defensive shot” and the driver and a passenger drove away.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the circumstances of the incident.

Portland and Oregon leaders said at a news conference Thursday evening that they had no details on what led to the shootings, even whether the violence was linked to immigration enforcement.

While they said the FBI was investigating, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, both Democrats, called for a pause in the federal immigration crackdown pending a full and independent investigation.

“There was a time when we could take them at their word,” Wilson said of how federal officials had described the shooting. “That time is long past.”

At the same news conference, state Senator Kayse Jama, who arrived in the U.S. 28 years ago as a refugee from Somalia, addressed federal immigration agents: “We do not need you, you are not welcome, you need to get the hell out of our community.”

In an earlier statement, Portland police said that the shooting took place near a medical clinic in the eastern part of the city. Six minutes after arriving at the scene and determining federal agents were involved, police were informed that two people with gunshot wounds – a man and a woman – were asking for help at a location about 2 miles (3 km) to the northeast of the medical clinic.

Police said they applied tourniquets to the man and woman, who were taken to a hospital. Their condition was unknown.

The shooting came a day after a federal agent from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a separate agency from the Border Patrol within the Department of Homeland Security, fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in her car in Minneapolis.

That shooting has prompted two days of protests in Minneapolis.

Officers from both ICE and Border Patrol have been deployed in cities across the U.S. as part of Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

While the aggressive enforcement operations have been cheered by the president’s supporters, Democrats and civil rights activists have decried the posture as an unnecessary provocation.

U.S. officials contend criminal suspects and anti-Trump activists have increasingly used their cars as weapons, though video evidence has sometimes contradicted their claims.