Five years ago, rioters in Portland set fire to government buildings, epitomizing for many on the right the lawlessness and chaos that swirled around the George Floyd protests.
President Donald Trump never forgot.
On Saturday, the president announced that he directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to send U.S. troops to “War ravaged Portland” to protect “ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” He also gave the extraordinary addendum that he was greenlighting the use of “Full Force, if necessary” in an American city.
The president, his aides and allies have been increasingly focused on Portland over the last several weeks, repeatedly referring to the city in apocalyptic terms that call back to the summer of 2020, when protesters gathered against police violence for more than 170 days.
Many demonstrations that summer were peaceful, but some people looted shops, tore down statues and clashed with police. Trump deployed more than 750 Department of Homeland Security officials into the city to quell riots without the approval of state and local officials.
On Thursday, in the Oval Office, Trump pointed to Portland for at least the third time in recent weeks as an example of a city in despair.
“Take a look at Portland some time,” Trump said. “These are crazy people, and they’re trying to burn down buildings.”
The president’s fixation with Portland — which has a far lower homicide rate than places like Memphis, Washington and Chicago, where Trump has already deployed federal troops or threatened to do so — has as much to do with what the city represents as the protests against ICE currently taking place. The White House views Portland as a useful example in its law-and-order campaign — a city Trump officials can elevate to push forward their message on everything from immigration to crime to far-left violence.
“It was just the poster city for the problem in 2020,” said a person close to the administration, granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“You get the sanctuary [city] element, you get no National Guard called in by the state, much less the president,” the person said, suggesting the president won’t be restrained this time with the military. “There’s a lot of factors that make Portland a useful analytical point.”
The protests in Portland at a federal ICE field office have been on the White House’s radar for weeks, said a White House official granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s thinking.
The demonstrations peaked in June, devolving into a riot with police making arrests and issuing a riot declaration. Since then, protests have continued daily, a mixture of larger, peaceful daytime protests and smaller, sometimes hostile groups coming out after dark.
Conflict often occurs at night when ICE agents try to move vehicles and protesters try to stop them. While these events have resulted in injuries to both federal agents and protesters, no more than a few dozen demonstrators have been present late at night at the ICE office in recent weeks — compared to the hundreds of protesters during the summer of 2020.
In recent weeks, Trump has made statements about the protests in Portland that marry facts from 2020 with the current situation. On Friday, he said protesters have tried to burn down federal buildings and that people have died at these protests. He also accused all the protesters of being professional agitators and anarchists.
There have been no fatalities at protests this year — though there were during the 2020 protests. One far-right protester associated with the group Patriot Prayer was shot and killed during dueling protests in August 2020, for example. There was one attempt to start a fire at the office this summer, according to a city news release, but it was put out before causing major damage.
Administration officials point to the July arrest of three people, who are accused of assaulting ICE officers. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has accused those protesters of having ties to antifa, a decentralized and sometimes violent protest culture of far-left activists, and said that the ICE office is under siege by the “local Antifa terror cell.”
The White House official said protesters have been outside the field office in South Portland since June, and said as of early September, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had brought federal charges against 26 people for crimes including arson, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.
The official said despite frustration from locals in the neighborhood, Oregon Democrats “refuse to do anything about it,” with Gov. Tina Kotek earlier this month calling the president’s threats to deploy guard troops in Portland “absurd, unlawful and un-American.”
The White House did not provide details about the president’s timing or plans, including what legal authority Trump would rely on to authorize the “full force” of the military in Portland. Kotek said in a statement that her office is reaching out to the White House and Department of Homeland Security for more information, saying there is “no national security threat in Portland.”
Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist and War Room podcast host, has called on the White House to declare martial law in a section of Portland to arrest “antifa.”
“Just round them up,” Bannon told POLITICO. “I think you’re going to see, with this terrorist designation, I believe you’re going to see a real increase in federal support.”
But a senior police official at the Portland Police Department, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about police operations, said sending in additional federal forces would escalate the situation.
“It will increase the number of protesters,” he said. When asked what the PPD would do if that happens, he added: “I truly don’t know.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Saturday accused Trump of wanting to trigger chaos.
“He wants to create a big problem that he can then, in turn, use to justify other expansions of authoritarian control,” Merkley said.
The tension in Portland was on display at a press conference hosted by newly elected Mayor Keith Wilson on Friday night with members of the city council and congressional delegation. There, Merkley urged “don’t take the bait” and asked protesters to keep their distance from federal officers.
But community members heckled the mayor, members of Congress and city councilors after Wilson cautioned residents that police will act if there is violence or vandalism.
“We’re peaceful, they’re violent,” one community member yelled, while another said she “got her face bashed in” at a protest “for doing my constitutional right.” The press conference ended early as attendees yelled over lawmakers gathered.
“If people pour out in protest in anger about these federal forces, these military forces coming into Portland, it will produce exactly what Trump wants,” Merkley said Saturday — adding that protesters who’ve been attacked have a right to be angry but should not lash out. “What [Trump] wants is a violent interaction, so do not help him achieve his objective.”
City officials and the police department have struggled with how to handle the late-night protests, particularly the sporadic violence between protesters and federal law enforcement. In 2020, an independent review found that poor training and guidance among local police about when to use escalating tactics such as tear gas, among other things, escalated the protests.
Police Chief Bob Day told POLITICO in June his department shifted tactics toward deescalation in light of the 2020 protests, but declined to be interviewed for this story. Merkley said that he and other lawmakers met with ICE Seattle Field Office Director Camilla Wamsley on Thursday to discuss the escalating violence outside the Portland office.
The senior police official said the situation continues to escalate as federal officers are doxxed, threatened or physically hurt — and then in turn take a more adversarial approach to the late-night protesters.
“It is a political nightmare,” he added.
Trump’s move to target Portland is the latest in a series of threats to deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities — part of the president’s expansive law-and-order crackdown. The president this summer surged federal troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., while also threatening action in Maryland and Illinois. And earlier this month, he announced he would be sending the National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee, in coordination with Republican Gov. Bill Lee.
Saturday’s announcement on Portland also comes amid the Trump administration’s larger crackdown on the political left. In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of the youth-focused conservative organization Turning Point USA, the president last week designated antifa, the broad ideology, a domestic terrorist organization, and signed another executive order late this week ordering his Cabinet secretaries to go after “organized political violence” — as advocates and lawyers warn of a chilling effect on speech and activism, and insist the president lacks the legal authority to take these actions.
In Portland, Reyna Lopez, executive director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Oregon’s farmworkers union, said her family and other Portlanders were spending Saturday morning at the pumpkin patch, not fearing for their lives as the president has stated.
PCUN, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups in Portland are echoing lawmaker’s calls that residents remain nonviolent, she said, pointing to a recent protest where a few hundred faith leaders sang hymns outside the ICE office as an example of the typical tenor of daytime gathering. But not everyone is ready to hear it.
“Unfortunately people last time around did not have that discipline, and it painted us in a bad light,” she said, adding that the graffiti at the current ICE office isn’t good, but neither were the chemicals used by federal officers that forced a local charter school to move.
Locals, meanwhile, are already working to combat the president’s depiction of Portland as violent and frightening — posting photos of idyllic Portland streets and food cart pods to social media.
“The administration is just trying to use fear to try to divide people,” Lopez said.