Earlier this week, a clarinet player was arrested during a protest at the ICE facility in Portland. Now, musical comedian Robby Roadsteamer says he has been charged with trespassing after being detained while singing alongside the Portland Frog at the same location.
A video posted by Roadsteamer (real name Rob Potylo) on YouTube shows him dressed in a giraffe costume, channeling Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” as he sings, “If you hate brown people and you are a Nazi.”
Despite standing several feet behind the “Do Not Cross” blue line, a group of ICE officers dressed in military fatigues can be seen grabbing Roadsteamer and leading him toward the facility. Watch the footage below.
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Further details about the incident appear on a GoFundMe page launched to help Roadsteamer raise legal funds:
“Robby Roadsteamer has been detained by ICE in Portland, Oregon after a peacekeeping trip to heal the divide with the city battling ICE illegally grabbing innocent people off the streets in Portland.
He was singing with the Portland Frog when ICE started shooting pepper balls at him, then detained Robby.
Robby is being brought up on trespassing charges and asked to appear in court in Portland even though ICE dragged him onto their property!”
Roadsteamer’s arrest came after clarinetist Oriana Korol was tackled and arrested while protesting with the Unpresidented Brass Band outside the same ICE facility. Korol had been playing the “Ghostbusters” theme across the street when she was detained.
According to The Oregonian, Korol was taken to the Clark County Jail. A jail services representative told the newspaper that she was being held on suspicion of assaulting a federal officer.
“Ori, our clarinet player, was pinned against this fence, with whoever they’re trying to detain at her feet, and she’s just kind of stuck,” trumpeter Miles Thompson told The Oregonian. “Then suddenly one of the other officers just tackled her. I didn’t see anything that warranted any kind of arrest.”
The two incidents are part of a wider pattern of unrest at the ICE facility, where both local police and federal law enforcement have arrested dozens of people in recent months. President Trump has claimed “Portland is burning to the ground” due to “paid insurrectionists” and antifa, while the question of federal troop deployment to the city remains the subject of legal and political dispute.