Credit: Screengrab, Detroit Will Breathe Instagram

A viral video shows what appears to be federal agents entering unmarked cars in Detroit, leading to wide speculation that those are the officers President Donald Trump promised he would send to to cities “run by liberal Democrats.”

But a Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman tells Metro Times the agents shown in the video are its own officers.

The video was shared by Detroit Will Breathe, the group leading Detroit’s protests against police brutality. By Tuesday evening it had been viewed tens of thousands of times and shared on social media countless more times.

Public Information Officer Brian McNeal tells Metro Times that the DEA agents were executing an enforcement action in the area.

He could not say for a fact if it was a drug-related enforcement action.

“We do enforce drug laws, but I don’t know for a fact that it was drug-related,” he says. “It could also be gangs who are involved in drug-related trafficking.”

Trump made the comment on Monday after a reporter asked about the mysterious, unidentified agents that were seen on video detaining protesters in Portland, Oregon.

Michigan officials including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Mayor Mike Duggan, and Detroit Police Chief James Craig have all said they are opposed to Trump sending agents here to deal with the Black Lives Matter protests.

“Unlike nearly every other major city in the country, the Detroit Police Department never requested assistance from the National Guard — we handled our issues as a community,” Duggan and Craig said in a joint statement. “We definitely have no need for any federal presence being sent in now.”

You can see the video here.

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Earlier today, several armed DEA, CBP and FBI agents were sighted in plain unmarked cars on Seven Mile and Evergreen. The decision of Donald Trump to utilize federal forces against American citizens exercising our constitutional right to protest is fundamentally racist, faschist and serves as a tactic of political repression. In Portland these agents brutally assaulted and illegally detained protestors, even failing to keep a record of the detentions. The deploying of these forces to Detroit is another step in Trump’s orchestrated and coordinated attack against the free speech of protestors. This is a risk to the lives of Detroiters and is a blatant threat to the public safety of protestors and residents in general. This is a politically motivated attack on the movement in defense of Black lives and the collective unity displayed by integrated crowds demanding an end to the suffering of Black and Brown people in this country at the hands of the government throughout the last two months. This movement has beaten back every attempt to silence and violate our constitutional right to assemble and protest, and we will continue to do so. We will not be intimidated by the presence of federal agents. Therefore, we will continue our mobilizations and actions as planned. Not only do we call on the Trump administration to get his federal troops out of Detroit, but we call on City Council, Mayor Duggan, Gov. Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel to uphold the constitutional rights of protestors against the intimidation tactics of federal agents.

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This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2020.

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Leyland “Lee” DeVito is the editor in chief of Detroit Metro Times since 2016. His writing has also been published in CREEM, VICE, In These Times, and New City.

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