July 24-26, 2020 -- Mercenaries target American citizens in cities around the nation

publication date: Jul 24, 2020

July 24-26, 2020 -- Mercenaries target American citizens in cities around the nation

Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, San Francisco, Tulsa, Washington, DC, and Seattle

Supplementing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) paramilitary forces targeting peaceful protesters around the country are private security personnel contracted to DHS by Constellis, the mercenary company once known as Blackwater. Founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, Blackwater ran into hot water during the George W. Bush administration for committing the types of

human rights abuses recently seen being used by DHS and Constellis mercenaries against protesters in Portland, Oregon. The snatching of innocent people off the streets of Portland by DHS mercenary contractors wearing camouflage uniforms without identification was de rigueur for Blackwater personnel in urban battlefields ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. Prince, who changed Blackwater's name to Xe Services in 2009 and sold the firm in 2011 after he and his company came under Congressional scrutiny, is the brother of Donald Trump's scandal-ridden Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. Prince now runs another mercenary firm, Reflex Responses (R2) under the patronage of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MBZ).

The former Blackwater became known as Academi. In 2014 it and another mercenary firm, Triple Canopy, were combined under the corporate umbrella of the Constellis Group. Also absorbed into the Constellis Group was an array of other mercenary firms, including Strategic Social, Tidewater Global Services, National Strategic Protective Services, AMK9, Edinburgh International, OMNIPLEX, Olive Group, and International Development Solutions. Coincidentally, Olive Group is headquartered in Dubai, not far from Prince's R2 training facility and mercenary complex outside of Abu Dhabi. The R2 facility is hidden behind the walls of Zayed Military City. Constellis is teamed with Clandestine Development LLC to market a smart phone based surveillance system called Lifeline Response.

On August 2, 2017, Constellis, which is headquartered in the "Beltway Bandit" corridor running alongside the Dulles Airport access highway in Reston, Virginia, received DHS/Federal Protective Services (DHS/FPS) contracts for its Centerra division and other corporate entities to provide "security

services at federal locations throughout the Philadelphia Metropolitan area and Northern California." Northern California sites include San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and Sacramento. The two Constellis contracts were in addition to existing Triple Canopy contracts for security services for DHS/FPS in New Jersey, Maryland, Oklahoma (Tulsa and Oklahoma City), the District of Columbia, Washington (Seattle), Michigan (Detroit), Wisconsin (Eau Claire and Appleton), Florida (Miami and Miramar), New Jersey (Newark), Puerto Rico (San Juan), and Minnesota (Minneapolis). Triple Canopy has a contract to collect and analyze intelligence at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) in San Francisco. Specifically, Triple Canopy is responsible for maintaining the "Northern California First Responder Terrorism Liaison Officer Program."

On December 12, 2019, a Triple Canopy FPS guard at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Miramar, Florida threatened to pepper spray activists trying to deliver water, juice, and diapers to children inside the detention complex being forced into the hot sun without any shade or lavatory facilities.

In Portland, Constellis/Centerra mercenaries joined other camouflaged agents of DHS's Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Coast Guard in conducting urban warfare against Portland residents that has included the tear gassing of a large group of protesting Portland mothers, as well as Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and his five-person security detail. Constellis/Centerra mercenaries may have actually been deputized as government agents by the Federal Protective Service and tasked to work in tandem with the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit also deployed in the Rose City.

The renditioning of Portland protesters and regular pedestrians comes right out of the playbook used by Blackwater on the streets of Baghdad, Kandahar, Ramallah, Gaza, and Karachi. One renditioned Portlander told The New York Times that one of the arresting DHS personnel said, "'It’s OK, it’s OK,’ and just grabbed me and threw me into the van. Another officer pulled my beanie down, so I couldn’t see.” Regular and mercenary DHS forces [left] are using unmarked airport rental vans to patrol Portland streets, far from federal property they are contracted to protect, to snatch pedestrians and rendition them to locations where they are held incommunicado without being able to contact family, friends, or a lawyer. In some cases, these hapless abductees are released without being charged with any crimes.

Trump has threatened to send similar paramilitary forces to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, and Oakland. In addition, such federal forces are being deployed to Kansas City and Albuquerque. Downtown Washington, DC's Lafayette Square was the first protest zone to feel the stinging tear gas and bruising batons of Trump's new DHS/Department of Justice paramilitary force, which violently suppressed a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest following the May 25 Minneapolis Police killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, an act that set off nationwide and worldwide protests against such police brutality.

Attorney General William Barr has supplemented the DHS forces with additional camouflage/SWAT-uniformed personnel from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms. and Explosives (ATFE), Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Prisons, and U.S. Marshals Service. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, a former Republican Senate staffer and lobbyist, is threatening to send his "Wolfpack" security forces into any jurisdiction that he sees fit.

Erik Prince and his current firm, R2, and his former firm, Blackwater -- now Constellis Group -- have a history of employing as mercenaries foreign nationals with records of committing heinous human rights abuses, including torture and murder. Among the ranks of a number of U.S. "private security" firms are found veterans of vicious paramilitary forces of apartheid South Africa, Colombia, General Augusto Pinochet's Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Such brigands are often commanded by former Special Forces officers serving with the armed forces of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, and Australia. If any foreign mercenary personnel are currently operating within the United States and are involved in suppressing the constitutional rights of Americans, or even otherwise legitimate law enforcement activities, it would represent the overturning of the rule of law in the United States to a degree never before seen in the nation's history.

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