In July, tear gas billowed up to Mindan Ocon’s third-floor apartment in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her three-year-old daughter.
The irritants were so powerful that they caused her child's eyes to burn, so Ocon took her daughter to the hospital.
“I don’t know what the orange chemical is, you know? I don’t know what’s in it. I don’t know what it can do to my child,” Ocon said.
Ocon's affordable housing complex, Gray’s Landing, is located across the street from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building where dozens of protesters have been gathering in recent months.
Like clockwork, she and her neighbors have observed and recorded videos of federal agents deploying chemical munitions to disperse the crowds.
Residents say they are suffering health consequences at their own homes, with no escape.
“I’ve just been so tired from chemicals,” said Ocon. “I wake up, and my whole body is burning, like – I don’t feel good. I just randomly start coughing so hard to the point where I’m like, ‘I’m going to throw up.’”
In October, the gas became so overwhelming inside Gray's Landing that Lashawnda Shavers, a resident on the fifth floor who says she suffers from an autoimmune disease that affects her lungs, called 911.
“I can’t leave the house because there is tear gas in the hallway, but it got on my back door, and I am scared!” Shavers shouted to the emergency call taker in a recording obtained by Scripps News. “There’s like, tear gas everywhere.”
Another woman who lived in the area called 911 to report her discomfort. “I’m not even a protester! I’m in my apartment...and I cannot breathe, and it sucks!” she exclaimed.
Neighbors take legal action
In December, multiple residents who lived at Gray’s Landing joined a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming federal agents have been launching irritants “with deliberate indifference to the harmful effects on Gray’s Landing residents.”
The harm they’ve caused, they argued, has included “acute respiratory distress, horrible burning in their eyes and throats, dizziness, slurred speech, and episodes of PTSD due to the government’s actions.”
Attorneys working on behalf of the residents also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the federal government from “deploying tear gas, smoke grenades and other chemical munitions that are likely to infiltrate Gray’s Landing and its apartments, unless the use of such munitions is necessary to protect against an imminent and concrete threat to the lives of federal officers or other persons.”
The government argued against the motion in a January court filing, which was filed before the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota, and subsequent protests.
“Considering both the geographic location of the apartment building in question and type of chemical munitions that the (Federal Protective Service) FPS has used at the ICE facility, it is highly improbable that the use of said munitions...would result in any adverse impact on the apartment building or its residents," Roberto Cantu, the deputy director for FPS, wrote.
A separate lawsuit, filed in November, on behalf of other demonstrators, journalists, and residents who live near the ICE facility, claims multiple people have been unnecessarily injured by federally-launched munitions, including an elderly couple who were overcome with “pepper dust” while demonstrating in front of the ICE facility.
Laurie Eckman, 84, “heard a loud bang, and felt an extremely hard and direct impact to her head in the region of her right temple,” the lawsuit alleged. "She was choking and coughing, could not see, and was disoriented and frightened.” When she returned home, the lawsuit said, she realized she was “covered in blood.”
The lawsuit claims Eckman’s 84-year-old husband, Richard, was also affected and found residue from the irritants on his walker.
In legal filings, attorneys said plaintiffs are “suffering irreparable harm” and requested the court issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent agents working for the Department of Homeland Security from “directing or using chemical projectile munitions...unless the target poses there (sic) an imminent threat of physical harm to law enforcement or others present.”
A judge granted the request in early February.
Health department tracks hospital visits
Regional health officials, meanwhile, have been tracking protest-related injuries in the Portland area for several months.
According to the Multnomah County Health Department, there were at least 29 protest-related injuries treated at emergency rooms and urgent care clinics in the county between June 1, 2025, and February 1, 2026.
Most of the injuries involved tear gas exposure and projectile strikes.
Brendon Haggerty, a Multnomah County health manager who works to address environmental exposures, said the numbers represent the tip of the iceberg.
“I think there’s a lot of concern and uncertainty about what kind of long-term effects folks might have,” he said. “Plenty of folks who have barriers that can’t address their exposures right away feel like they don’t have choices about being exposed.”
According to the health department, it is likely that many people did not report their injuries to an emergency department or an urgent care clinic, so their data may not have been collected or counted.
Portland Mayor fights munitions deployment
To help protect citizens, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said the city has been moving to “operationalize” a local ordinance that would further deter the use of chemical munitions.
The ordinance, he said, would impose a fee on detention facilities that use chemical agents.
"The federal government must and will be held accountable,” he wrote in a public statement.
Federal response
In February, we reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for a comment about several incidents, and no one responded.
However, in January – prior to Pretti’s death - a spokesperson provided a statement about a California incident in which a protester was struck in the eye and blinded by a projectile fired by a federal agent.
On Jan. 9, a mob of about 60 rioters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at law enforcement officers outside the federal building in Santa Ana. Two officers were injured. Two violent rioters were arrested and charged with assault on a federal officer and disorderly conduct. This was a highly coordinated campaign of violence where rioters wielded shields. One of the rioters, who was arrested for disorderly conduct, was taken to the hospital for a cut and was released that night. For public safety and to restore law and order, officers deployed non-toxic projectiles.
Make no mistake, rioting and assaulting law enforcement is not only dangerous but a crime.
Secretary Noem has been clear: Any rioter who obstructs or assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Scripps News also requested an interview with leaders at the local ICE facility in Portland.
A spokesperson for ICE declined an on-camera interview but provided this statement on January 30, 2026:
"ICE officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers. This includes training in de-escalation tactics and ongoing use-of-force training. Our officers are facing a more than 1,000% increase in assaults against them. Over and over again, people with nothing better to do choose to ignore warnings, including over loudspeaker, and have attempted to impede our officers and have thrown rocks, bottles and fireworks at them, have used vehicles as weapons against them and have shot at them. If you assault an officer or attempt to obstruct law enforcement activities you can expect to be met with force, which can include pepper spray.”
In a January 24, 2026, 911 call obtained by Scripps News, one caller who identified himself as an operator from Federal Protective Service for the Department of Homeland Security relayed that protesters had been “tearing down fences” and “breaking into the facility.”
Residents wait for relief
Ocon and Shavers both own gas masks now, and each has an air purifier in her apartment to helpcleartheair, but they say the damage has already been done.
“It seems like our voices at this building are ignored or silenced because we are the only residential building within the immediate vicinity of thatfacility,” said Shavers.
