[Content warning: Embedded video and photos in this post contain images of injury and blood.]
[UPDATE June 18 12:30 pm: We added further clarification that the projectile did not appear to be live ammunition.]
"I doubt I was there more than even five minutes before I got shot," Vincent Hawkins says, recalling June 14.
The local ER nurse had just finished a shift when he arrived at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in South Portland, where a chaotic exchange between federal law enforcement and protesters was unfolding.
Hawkins, 55, was shot and nearly blinded by a “less lethal” projectile that federal officers fired into the crowd.
The injury was captured on bystander video and by the Portland Mercury, which published photos and videos of Hawkins’ injuries that day while reporting on the “No Kings” rally.
Related: Portland Rises Up Against Trump and ICE with Two Saturday Protests
The day's downtown Portland demonstration drew 50,000 participants and remained peaceful. But as most of the crowd trickled away, a smaller contingent marched to South Portland, where they joined an ongoing Occupy ICE protest. The activists there were already several days into clashes with the federal officers patrolling the building and the swelling crowd set off a particularly violent barrage.
At ICE, Hawkins said he pulled out his bullhorn and had just started to talk, when he felt an instant pain and saw a flash of light.
In video footage, Hawkins can be heard addressing the besieged officers—“there’s a reason that there are thousands of people out here!”—when he suddenly staggers back in pain around 5:30 pm.
He couldn't see from his left eye and felt the sensation of fluid running down his face. Hawkins couldn't tell if it was blood or fluid from inside his eye, he later told the Mercury.
"I was watching this hand casually tossing out canisters of some kind of pepper gas or whatever tear gas they were using, then some flash bangs," he said. "Just casually, like not enough that you would move a crowd away; it just seemed like enough to taunt."
Hawkins stumbled from the facility as other protesters rushed to his aid. 911 operators told the activists that Portland Fire & Rescue could meet them a couple blocks away, so protesters escorted him. Emergency responders wanted to avoid the tear gas-covered street.
Earlier, federal agents shot a protester in the eye. Vincent is an ER nurse and said he came to the protest at the ICE facility in South Portland after a shift. Other protesters called an ambulance for him, but he had to walk several blocks to meet it, due to the munitions still flying.
— Suzette Smith (@suzettesmith.bsky.social) June 14, 2025 at 7:24 PM
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From there, the firefighters escorted Hawkins to an ambulance. He remembered the paramedics inside the ambulance could do little for him.
“You don't want to put pressure on the eye because you can't lose that fluid, so I just had to keep the eye still, and wait for ophthalmology to see it,” he said.
On Sunday, Hawkins reported that the ophthalmologist found blood in the eye, and he'd needed stitches. He'd been able to go home from the hospital, wearing an eye shield. At this time doctors are optimistic that he’ll recover his vision.
Hawkins says he started attending ICE protests in 2018, when he learned of the family separation policy enacted by the Trump administration. Protesters were suspicious, he recalled with a laugh.
"I'm a dad—a dad in cargo shorts,” he said. “They were like, ‘are you a cop?'"
The 2018 Occupy ICE protests in Portland disrupted the facility, forcing federal officers to close the building for several weeks. Hawkins remembers this as a success, even if ICE eventually reopened, better fortified with a sturdier fence.
After that, he says he stayed away from protests until recently, when he started going with a bullhorn. "I go down there, and I focus my speech directly to the people that are in the building," Hawkins said. "My philosophy—really the model is the civil rights leaders of the '50s and '60s. Non-violent protest, that's the model. I'm talking to the people in the building. I know that some of them have to think: Am I on the right side of history? Some of them have to have something on their conscience."
Hawkins says he demonstrates at ICE partially because of his family background, he's Hispanic on his mother’s side,
”It really was racism that killed my grandfather." Hawkins said.
His grandfather went to a hospital in 1988, he said, complaining of a headache, dizziness, and doubled vision. The staff sent him home with a tweak to his blood pressure medication, rather than assessing that he was suffering a stroke.
Hawkins said people of color are often perceived as hostile or aggressive if they try to advocate for themselves.
“And that's what killed my grandfather. He chose his dignity over his life,” Hawkins said. “That's why I keep getting a bigger and bigger bullhorn.”
He remembered the fear that he'd been blinded was mixed with another strong emotion: "I was like, 'I didn't get to finish saying what I had to say!' Yeah, I'll be out there again."
Vincent took a less lethal to the eye. He’s says he’s an ER nurse. Protesters call him an ambulance.
— Suzette Smith (@suzettesmith.bsky.social) June 14, 2025 at 5:41 PM
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