Portland police arrested a Massachusetts woman at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the South Waterfront on Saturday after the woman visited the protest site just to check out what she’d seen on the national news.
Letitia Johnson, 52, faces a misdemeanor harassment charge for allegedly “damaging another person’s property” after police said they interrupted an altercation near the ICE facility around 7:30 p.m.
Johnson, who lives near Cape Cod, was visiting a relative in Portland over the holiday weekend and decided to stop by the ICE facility to see for herself the site of so much national media attention.
“On the East Coast we see reports about how it’s crazy down here and all of this stuff, and then when you actually go down there and see, you see people dancing in unicorn costumes and playing music,” she said.
Johnson said she was leaving the area on Saturday night when a counterprotester made a comment to her and the relative about transgender people. They got into a heated argument, Johnson said, and the counterprotester alleged that she damaged his phone.
“I’m not on either side of the aisle,” Johnson said Monday. “I think he called me antifa. I don’t even know what antifa is.”
Portland police have arrested 70 people at the South Portland ICE facility amid near daily protests that picked up steam in October after President Donald Trump attempted to send the National Guard to help police demonstrations outside of the federal building.
Most of the fall arrests that led to charges involved alleged altercations between protesters and counterprotesters, according to a newsroom analysis.
Protests were comparatively calm in November, drawing anywhere from a handful to several dozen participants.