Federal agents have fired so much tear gas near Mindy King’s apartment in Portland, Ore., that she and her 13-year-old son bought gas masks to wear inside. Her neighbor, Diane Moreno, has gone to urgent care, twice, with tightness in her chest, and bloody discharge from her nose.
The problem, they say, is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office less than 100 feet away from their homes.
For months, ICE agents have sporadically used tear gas against protesters outside the facility. The repeated use of the chemicals, Ms. King and others fear, poses a serious threat to their health.
Now, she and other residents at their affordable housing complex are suing the Trump administration, making a novel legal accusation. The U.S. government is knowingly releasing poison gas into the homes of its own citizens, they allege in their lawsuit. The chemicals bind to walls, carpets, clothing, furniture and even children’s toys, they say, creating a toxic environment.
An October incident outside an ICE facility in Portland, Ore. Residents across the street have sued over the use of tear gas. (Credit: Jordan Gale for The New York Times)
Legal experts said the case is unusual in that it focuses on the public health and environmental harms of tear gas use, beyond questions of civil rights or police conduct.
The lawsuit also claims that federal agents have at times deployed chemical munitions not for crowd control, but to create dramatic visuals for conservative media influencers invited to the facility. A hearing in the case, which seeks an injunction against further use of the chemicals, is scheduled on Friday.
“I can’t believe I’m living in a world where I have to worry about tear gas in my home,” said Ms. King, a single mother of two whose apartment in the apartment complex, Gray’s Landing, has a direct view of the ICE facility. “There’s no sense of security. This isn’t home anymore.”
The case speaks to the intensity of the recent federal immigration crackdown in cities across the United States, experts say.
It also underscores that tear gas — which is banned internationally for use in war, but still used in domestic policing — “is an indiscriminate weapon and a respiratory hazard, period,” said Dr. Anthony M. Szema, a clinical professor of medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and the chair of the Section on Terrorism and Inhalation Disasters at the American Thoracic Society.
“If it wafts into an enclosed space, like a car or a housing development where children are, where pregnant women are, where elderly people are,” Dr. Szema said, “that’s a setup for disaster.”
In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said federal agents were “authorized to do what is appropriate and necessary in each situation to diffuse violence against our officers.”
The lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Kristi Noem, and related agencies.
It was “not remotely ICE’s fault,” that the Portland ICE facility was the site of frequent protests, Ms. McLaughlin said. (A federal judge recently characterized the protests in Portland as “largely peaceful” and has blocked the deployment of the National Guard to the city.)
A January clash with the Gray’s Landing apartment building visible to the left. An October protest at the ICE facility. (Credit: Allison Barr/The Oregonian, via Associated Press; Jordan Gale for The New York Times)
Tear gas is designed and marketed for short-term use, not long-term use over weeks or months. Its intention is to temporarily incapacitate individuals without causing permanent harm.
And while there are still many unknowns about the health and environmental risks associated with longer-term exposure, research increasingly shows that the physical discomfort triggered by exposure to tear gas — intense irritation of the eyes, skin, nose, throat, and lungs — isn’t always temporary.
For both protesters and the general public, there is mounting evidence that tear gas can cause long term damage to the skin and lungs, worsen asthma, induce infections like bronchitis and pneumonia and in some cases cause blindness, said Dr. Rohini Haar, an emergency physician and an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley. “These chemical irritants can injure so many different part of your body,” she said.
The use of tear gas in Portland has roots in protests that started there last summer. In late September President Trump announced he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to deploy all necessary Troops to protect War-ravaged Portland.”
The lawsuit alleges that agents have unnecessarily used tear gas against largely nonviolent protests, sometimes even for the benefit of media influencers shooting videos there. It cites an Oct. 4 incident where a small group of protesters at the ICE facility was hit by tear gas and smoke grenades, and military helicopters hovered overhead, while the influencers made videos.
Ben Bergquam, a prominent right-wing media personality, later posted a video with the caption “Happening now at the Portland ICE facility! Multiple arrests, tear gas and the fight to save our country!”
Demonstrators and agents outside the building on Oct. 25. (Credit: John Rudoff/Reuters)
The White House used scenes of tear gas and smoke in a video montage. The Gray’s Landing building can be seen in the background, through the smoke.
Days later, Mr. Trump invited several of the media figures to the White House for a presidential round table.
The White House deferred comments to the Department of Homeland Security.
Tear gas isn’t actually a gas, but a powder mixed with solvents and propellants, which can also be toxic.
The health effects of exposure can be particularly dangerous for children or seniors, as well as people with underlying conditions, said Dr. Haar, who is also a medical adviser to Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that calls attention to human rights violations.
Recent studies have also highlighted previously underreported risks tear gas poses to reproductive health. But there are still big gaps in the research, Dr. Haar said, particularly on longer-term effects.
Once released, tear gas can persist in the environment long after the visible fog disappears, she said. In 2019, after Hong Kong police used tear gas against anti-government protesters in clashes that lasted for days, several schools suspended classes to deep-clean their buildings.
Reach Community Development, the nonprofit that manages Gray’s Landing, says it has spent more than $100,000 on air filtration systems and other equipment to try to better protect the building’s roughly 240 residents from tear gas.
Air cleaners have been installed in Gray’s Landing, as well as sticky pads at entrances, to keep the building clear of tear gas materials. (Credit: Kristina Barker for The New York Times)
It remains tricky to measure how far tear gas can travel or how easily it might enter nearby buildings.
Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths college at the University of London, investigated tear gas use by the Portland police during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 and found that it likely spread at least a half-mile. In some locations, airborne concentrations reached more than 800 times a federally-recognized safety limit, the investigation found.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in a fact sheet on tear gas that harmful effects “are more likely if someone was exposed in a closed setting, such as indoors” and advises people “to get out of the building.” The center does not say what people should do if tear gas is also being used outside.
It was during World War I that the chemicals industry spurred the development of what were known as “harassing agents,” mainly a compound called CN. Since then, a chemical known as CS, considered more potent yet less toxic, has become the most commonly used agent.
International law now bans tear gas in warfare. But the United States and other nations have successfully lobbied for an exception for domestic policing.
Karen Pita Loor, a clinical professor of law at the Boston University School of Law and an expert on issues related to protest, said the case was “a sign of the times.”
Diane Moreno, a resident of Gray’s Landing, said she was shot with rubber bullets one evening returning home from work. (Credit: Kristina Barker for The New York Times)
“We’ve been talking a lot about the protesters, and rightfully so,” she said. “But this case is very, very interesting in that it focuses on the harms of these chemicals and how they’re now affecting entire communities,” she said.
Gray’s Landing residents, which include low-income veterans and those receiving Section 8 housing assistance, say they have found spent tear gas canisters on their balconies and in the building courtyard. Ms. King said she now films the protests from her window, and says federal agents have fired canisters in her direction. In October, as Ms. Moreno returned home from work, she said she was exposed to tear gas and shot with rubber bullets in the building driveway, leaving bruises on her skin.
Ms. Moreno now says she spends some nights sleeping in a bathtub with a towel under her bathroom door, or else in her car, parked away from the smoke. “The protesters have the choice. They have the choice to go out there and take that risk of being tear gassed or being pepper balled,” she said. “We don’t have the choice. We live here.”
Anna Griffin contributed reporting.