Police begin arresting Dakota Access Pipeline protesters after deadline passes

(Image credit: NBC News)

last updated 23 February 2017

Most of the remaining anti-Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrators left their protest camp near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota on Wednesday evening, as the federal deadline to evacuate the area passed, but police arrested about 10 people before nightfall, and some 50 protesters are believed to still be in the camp. Police said they will not enter the camp overnight. Some of the protesters drove off for home or other protest camps springing up on private land nearby, while others boarded buses to Bismarck, where they were offered clothes, bus fares home, and vouchers for food and hotel rooms, The Associated Press reports.

Earlier Wednesday, the protesters torched some of the wooden structures they called home during the yearlong fight against the pipeline, which will take crude oil from North Dakota to outside Chicago for refining. The protesters got a brief victory late last year when the Army Corps of Engineers, under former President Barack Obama, said it would review the environmental impact of the pipeline, but President Trump ordered the study to be dropped and construction to resume. Oil could be flowing through the pipeline now within weeks. The Army Corps said it ordered the camp dismantled because of the threat of spring floods.